The influence of particle size distribution on dose conversion factors for radon progeny in the underground excavations of hard coal mine.

PubMed

Skubacz, Krystian; Wojtecki, Łukasz; Urban, Paweł

2016-10-01

In Polish underground mines, hazards caused by enhanced natural radioactivity occur. The sources of radiation exposure are short-lived radon decay products, mine waters containing radium 226 Ra and 228 Ra and the radioactive sediments that can precipitate out of these waters. For miners, the greatest exposure is usually due to short-lived radon decay products. The risk assessment is based on the measurement of the total potential alpha energy concentration (PAEC) and the evaluation of the related dose by using the dose conversion factor as recommended by relevant legal requirements. This paper presents the results of measurements of particle size distributions of ambient aerosols in an underground hard coal mine, the assessment of the radioactive particle size distribution of the short-lived radon decay products and the corresponding values of dose conversion factors. The measurements of the ambient airborne particle size distribution were performed in the range from a few nanometers to about 20 μm. The study therefore included practically the whole class of respirable particles. The results showed that the high concentration of ultrafine and fine aerosols measured can significantly affect the value of the dose conversion factors, and consequently the corresponding committed effective dose, to which the miners can be exposed. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Mercury speciation and microbial transformations in mine wastes, stream sediments, and surface waters at the Almaden Mining District, Spain

USGS Publications Warehouse

Gray, John E.; Hines, Mark E.; Higueras, Pablo L.; Adatto, Isaac; Lasorsa, Brenda K.

2004-01-01

Speciation of Hg and conversion to methyl-Hg were evaluated in mine wastes, sediments, and water collected from the Almade??n District, Spain, the world's largest Hg producing region. Our data for methyl-Hg, a neurotoxin hazardous to humans, are the first reported for sediment and water from the Almade??n area. Concentrations of Hg and methyl-Hg in mine waste, sediment, and water from Almade??n are among the highest found at Hg mines worldwide. Mine wastes from Almade??n contain highly elevated Hg concentrations, ranging from 160 to 34 000 ??g/g, and methyl-Hg varies from <0.20 to 3100 ng/g. Isotopic tracer methods indicate that mine wastes at one site (Almadenejos) exhibit unusually high rates of Hg-methylation, which correspond with mine wastes containing the highest methyl-Hg concentrations. Streamwater collected near the Almade??n mine is also contaminated, containing Hg as high as 13 000 ng/L and methyl-Hg as high as 30 ng/L; corresponding stream sediments contain Hg concentrations as high as 2300 ??g/g and methyl-Hg concentrations as high as 82 ng/g. Several streamwaters contain Hg concentrations in excess of the 1000 ng/L World Health Organization (WHO) drinking water standard. Methyl-Hg formation and degradation was rapid in mines wastes and stream sediments demonstrating the dynamic nature of Hg cycling. These data indicate substantial downstream transport of Hg from the Almade??n mine and significant conversion to methyl-Hg in the surface environment.

Applying operational research and data mining to performance based medical personnel motivation system.

PubMed

Niaksu, Olegas; Zaptorius, Jonas

2014-01-01

This paper presents the methodology suitable for creation of a performance related remuneration system in healthcare sector, which would meet requirements for efficiency and sustainable quality of healthcare services. Methodology for performance indicators selection, ranking and a posteriori evaluation has been proposed and discussed. Priority Distribution Method is applied for unbiased performance criteria weighting. Data mining methods are proposed to monitor and evaluate the results of motivation system.We developed a method for healthcare specific criteria selection consisting of 8 steps; proposed and demonstrated application of Priority Distribution Method for the selected criteria weighting. Moreover, a set of data mining methods for evaluation of the motivational system outcomes was proposed. The described methodology for calculating performance related payment needs practical approbation. We plan to develop semi-automated tools for institutional and personal performance indicators monitoring. The final step would be approbation of the methodology in a healthcare facility.

Test Methodologies for Personal Protective Equipment Against Anti-Personnel Mine Blast (Methodologies d’essais pour le materiel de protection prsonnel contre le souffle produit par les mines antipersonnel)

DTIC Science & Technology

2004-03-01

probabilistic by design. Finally, as the fragments disperse, fragment density decreases, and the probability of a fragment strike drops rapidly. Given the...Any PPE subjected to such testing needs to be exposed repeatedly to several mines in order to obtain a sufficient number of strikes . This will allow...velocity of each fragment, and the location of fragment strikes cannot be controlled precisely. This means that the same test must be repeated a

Conversations with Freudbot in Second Life: Mining the Virtuality of Relationship

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Heller, Bob

2017-01-01

The unstructured conversations of students who chatted with Freudbot in his Second Life virtual office over a 32-month period were examined in order to better understand the nature of the virtual relationship between students and conversational agents (CA) as historical figures. This research builds on past work that examined these conversations…

Educational Design as Conversation: A Conversation Analytical Perspective on Teacher Dialogue

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

van Kruiningen, Jacqueline F.

2013-01-01

The aim of this methodological paper is to expound on and demonstrate the value of conversation-analytical research in the area of (informal) teacher learning. The author discusses some methodological issues in current research on interaction in teacher learning and holds a plea for conversation-analytical research on interactional processes in…

40 CFR Appendix B to Part 72 - Methodology for Conversion of Emissions Limits

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 16 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Methodology for Conversion of... Conversion of Emissions Limits For the purposes of the Acid Rain Program, all emissions limits must be... conditions. Generic conversions for these limits are based on the assumed average energy contents listed in...

40 CFR Appendix B to Part 72 - Methodology for Conversion of Emissions Limits

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 16 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Methodology for Conversion of... Conversion of Emissions Limits For the purposes of the Acid Rain Program, all emissions limits must be... conditions. Generic conversions for these limits are based on the assumed average energy contents listed in...

Semantic similarity analysis of protein data: assessment with biological features and issues.

PubMed

Guzzi, Pietro H; Mina, Marco; Guerra, Concettina; Cannataro, Mario

2012-09-01

The integration of proteomics data with biological knowledge is a recent trend in bioinformatics. A lot of biological information is available and is spread on different sources and encoded in different ontologies (e.g. Gene Ontology). Annotating existing protein data with biological information may enable the use (and the development) of algorithms that use biological ontologies as framework to mine annotated data. Recently many methodologies and algorithms that use ontologies to extract knowledge from data, as well as to analyse ontologies themselves have been proposed and applied to other fields. Conversely, the use of such annotations for the analysis of protein data is a relatively novel research area that is currently becoming more and more central in research. Existing approaches span from the definition of the similarity among genes and proteins on the basis of the annotating terms, to the definition of novel algorithms that use such similarities for mining protein data on a proteome-wide scale. This work, after the definition of main concept of such analysis, presents a systematic discussion and comparison of main approaches. Finally, remaining challenges, as well as possible future directions of research are presented.

Improving the Method of Roof Fall Susceptibility Assessment based on Fuzzy Approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ghasemi, Ebrahim; Ataei, Mohammad; Shahriar, Kourosh

2017-03-01

Retreat mining is always accompanied by a great amount of accidents and most of them are due to roof fall. Therefore, development of methodologies to evaluate the roof fall susceptibility (RFS) seems essential. Ghasemi et al. (2012) proposed a systematic methodology to assess the roof fall risk during retreat mining based on risk assessment classic approach. The main defect of this method is ignorance of subjective uncertainties due to linguistic input value of some factors, low resolution, fixed weighting, sharp class boundaries, etc. To remove this defection and improve the mentioned method, in this paper, a novel methodology is presented to assess the RFS using fuzzy approach. The application of fuzzy approach provides an effective tool to handle the subjective uncertainties. Furthermore, fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is used to structure and prioritize various risk factors and sub-factors during development of this method. This methodology is applied to identify the susceptibility of roof fall occurrence in main panel of Tabas Central Mine (TCM), Iran. The results indicate that this methodology is effective and efficient in assessing RFS.

76 FR 5719 - Pattern of Violations

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-02-02

... safety and health record of each mine rather than on a strictly quantitative comparison of mines to... several reservations, given the methodological difficulties involved in estimating the compensating wage...

Methodology of selecting dozers for lignite open pit mines in Serbia

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Stojanovic, D.; Ignjatovic, D.; Kovacevic, S.

1996-12-31

Apart from the main production processes (coal and overburden mining, rail conveyors transportation and storage of excavated masses) performed by great-capacity mechanization at open pit mines, numerous and different auxiliary works, that often have crucial influence on both the work efficiency of main equipment and the maintenance of optimum technical conditions of machines and plants covering technological system of open pit, are present. Successful realization of work indispensably requires a proper and adequate selection of auxiliary machines according to their type quantity, capacity, power etc. thus highly respecting specific conditions existing at each and every open pit mine. A dozermore » is certainly the most important and representative auxiliary machine at single open pit mine. It is widely used in numerous works that, in fact, are preconditions for successful work of the main mechanization and consequently the very selection of a dozer ranges among the most important operations when selecting mechanization. This paper presents the methodology of dozers selection when lignite open pit mines are concerned. A mathematical model defining the volume of work required for dozers to perform at open pit mines and consequently the number of necessary dozers was designed. The model underwent testing in practice at big open pit mines and can be used in design of future open pits mines.« less

Five years after the Metric Conversion Act, where do we stand? Survey of large US manufacturing and mining firms (the Fortune Magazine 1000)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

1980-12-01

A mail survey of randomly chosen 202 of the 1000 largest manufacturing and mining firms, as listed by Fortune magazine, was conducted in late 1979 and early 1980. About 64 percent (112 firms) responded with useful data. This Executive Summary draws on the full report (U.S. Metric Board 1979 Survey of Selected Large U.S. Firms and Industries, Lisa King, King Research, Inc., May 1980; AD-A-091-618) and provides an overview of the study's findings. Some selected findings are: (1) about 30 percent of the large firms produce at least one hard metric product; (2) about 48 percent of foreign sales are of metric products; (3) little corporate coordination and planning seems to accompany conversion to the metric system; (4) about one-third of the firms see laws and regulations as impeding conversion; (5) over 50 percent see lack of customers demand as inhibiting conversion; (6) the most realistic time period for conversion is 10 years, the minimum time for conversion (under pressure) is three years, and the preferred time (at the firm's own pace) is eight years.

A Contextualized, Differential Sequence Mining Method to Derive Students' Learning Behavior Patterns

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kinnebrew, John S.; Loretz, Kirk M.; Biswas, Gautam

2013-01-01

Computer-based learning environments can produce a wealth of data on student learning interactions. This paper presents an exploratory data mining methodology for assessing and comparing students' learning behaviors from these interaction traces. The core algorithm employs a novel combination of sequence mining techniques to identify deferentially…

E-Cigarette Social Media Messages: A Text Mining Analysis of Marketing and Consumer Conversations on Twitter

PubMed Central

2016-01-01

Background As the use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) rises, social media likely influences public awareness and perception of this emerging tobacco product. Objective This study examined the public conversation on Twitter to determine overarching themes and insights for trending topics from commercial and consumer users. Methods Text mining uncovered key patterns and important topics for e-cigarettes on Twitter. SAS Text Miner 12.1 software (SAS Institute Inc) was used for descriptive text mining to reveal the primary topics from tweets collected from March 24, 2015, to July 3, 2015, using a Python script in conjunction with Twitter’s streaming application programming interface. A total of 18 keywords related to e-cigarettes were used and resulted in a total of 872,544 tweets that were sorted into overarching themes through a text topic node for tweets (126,127) and retweets (114,451) that represented more than 1% of the conversation. Results While some of the final themes were marketing-focused, many topics represented diverse proponent and user conversations that included discussion of policies, personal experiences, and the differentiation of e-cigarettes from traditional tobacco, often by pointing to the lack of evidence for the harm or risks of e-cigarettes or taking the position that e-cigarettes should be promoted as smoking cessation devices. Conclusions These findings reveal that unique, large-scale public conversations are occurring on Twitter alongside e-cigarette advertising and promotion. Proponents and users are turning to social media to share knowledge, experience, and questions about e-cigarette use. Future research should focus on these unique conversations to understand how they influence attitudes towards and use of e-cigarettes. PMID:27956376

Working with Data: Discovering Knowledge through Mining and Analysis; Systematic Knowledge Management and Knowledge Discovery; Text Mining; Methodological Approach in Discovering User Search Patterns through Web Log Analysis; Knowledge Discovery in Databases Using Formal Concept Analysis; Knowledge Discovery with a Little Perspective.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Qin, Jian; Jurisica, Igor; Liddy, Elizabeth D.; Jansen, Bernard J; Spink, Amanda; Priss, Uta; Norton, Melanie J.

2000-01-01

These six articles discuss knowledge discovery in databases (KDD). Topics include data mining; knowledge management systems; applications of knowledge discovery; text and Web mining; text mining and information retrieval; user search patterns through Web log analysis; concept analysis; data collection; and data structure inconsistency. (LRW)

Data mining and computationally intensive methods: summary of Group 7 contributions to Genetic Analysis Workshop 13.

PubMed

Costello, Tracy J; Falk, Catherine T; Ye, Kenny Q

2003-01-01

The Framingham Heart Study data, as well as a related simulated data set, were generously provided to the participants of the Genetic Analysis Workshop 13 in order that newly developed and emerging statistical methodologies could be tested on that well-characterized data set. The impetus driving the development of novel methods is to elucidate the contributions of genes, environment, and interactions between and among them, as well as to allow comparison between and validation of methods. The seven papers that comprise this group used data-mining methodologies (tree-based methods, neural networks, discriminant analysis, and Bayesian variable selection) in an attempt to identify the underlying genetics of cardiovascular disease and related traits in the presence of environmental and genetic covariates. Data-mining strategies are gaining popularity because they are extremely flexible and may have greater efficiency and potential in identifying the factors involved in complex disorders. While the methods grouped together here constitute a diverse collection, some papers asked similar questions with very different methods, while others used the same underlying methodology to ask very different questions. This paper briefly describes the data-mining methodologies applied to the Genetic Analysis Workshop 13 data sets and the results of those investigations. Copyright 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Assessing post-industrial land cover change at the Pine Point Mine, NWT, Canada using multi-temporal Landsat analysis and landscape metrics.

PubMed

LeClerc, Emma; Wiersma, Yolanda F

2017-04-01

This study investigates land cover change near the abandoned Pine Point Mine in Canada's Northwest Territories. Industrial mineral development transforms local environments, and the effects of such disturbances are often long-lasting, particularly in subarctic, boreal environments where vegetation conversion can take decades. Located in the Boreal Plains Ecozone, the Pine Point Mine was an extensive open pit operation that underwent little reclamation when it shut down in 1988. We apply remote sensing and landscape ecology methods to quantify land cover change in the 20 years following the mine's closure. Using a time series of near-anniversary Landsat images, we performed a supervised classification to differentiate seven land cover classes. We used raster algebra and landscape metrics to track changes in land cover composition and configuration in the 20 years since the mine shut down. We compared our results with a site in Wood Buffalo National Park that was never subjected to extensive anthropogenic disturbance. This space-for-time substitution provided an analog for how the ecosystem in the Pine Point region might have developed in the absence of industrial mineral development. We found that the dense conifer class was dominant in the park and exhibited larger and more contiguous patches than at the mine site. Bare land at the mine site showed little conversion through time. While the combination of raster algebra and landscape metrics allowed us to track broad changes in land cover composition and configuration, improved access to affordable, high-resolution imagery is necessary to effectively monitor land cover dynamics at abandoned mines.

Redundancy and Novelty Mining in the Business Blogosphere

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tsai, Flora S.; Chan, Kap Luk

2010-01-01

Purpose: The paper aims to explore the performance of redundancy and novelty mining in the business blogosphere, which has not been studied before. Design/methodology/approach: Novelty mining techniques are implemented to single out novel information out of a massive set of text documents. This paper adopted the mixed metric approach which…

Identifying Learning Behaviors by Contextualizing Differential Sequence Mining with Action Features and Performance Evolution

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kinnebrew, John S.; Biswas, Gautam

2012-01-01

Our learning-by-teaching environment, Betty's Brain, captures a wealth of data on students' learning interactions as they teach a virtual agent. This paper extends an exploratory data mining methodology for assessing and comparing students' learning behaviors from these interaction traces. The core algorithm employs sequence mining techniques to…

A data mining methodology for predicting early stage Parkinson’s disease using non-invasive, high-dimensional gait sensor data

PubMed Central

Tucker, Conrad; Han, Yixiang; Nembhard, Harriet Black; Lewis, Mechelle; Lee, Wang-Chien; Sterling, Nicholas W; Huang, Xuemei

2017-01-01

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurological disorder after Alzheimer’s disease. Key clinical features of PD are motor-related and are typically assessed by healthcare providers based on qualitative visual inspection of a patient’s movement/gait/posture. More advanced diagnostic techniques such as computed tomography scans that measure brain function, can be cost prohibitive and may expose patients to radiation and other harmful effects. To mitigate these challenges, and open a pathway to remote patient-physician assessment, the authors of this work propose a data mining driven methodology that uses low cost, non-invasive sensors to model and predict the presence (or lack therefore) of PD movement abnormalities and model clinical subtypes. The study presented here evaluates the discriminative ability of non-invasive hardware and data mining algorithms to classify PD cases and controls. A 10-fold cross validation approach is used to compare several data mining algorithms in order to determine that which provides the most consistent results when varying the subject gait data. Next, the predictive accuracy of the data mining model is quantified by testing it against unseen data captured from a test pool of subjects. The proposed methodology demonstrates the feasibility of using non-invasive, low cost, hardware and data mining models to monitor the progression of gait features outside of the traditional healthcare facility, which may ultimately lead to earlier diagnosis of emerging neurological diseases. PMID:29541376

Factors and competitiveness analysis in rare earth mining, new methodology: case study from Brazil.

PubMed

Silva, Gustavo A; Petter, Carlos O; Albuquerque, Nelson R

2018-03-01

Rare earths are increasingly being applied in high-tech industries, such as green energy (e.g. wind power), hybrid cars, electric cars, permanent high-performance magnets, superconductors, luminophores and many other industrial sectors involved in modern technologies. Given that China dominates this market and imposes restrictions on production and exports whenever opportunities arise, it is becoming more and more challenging to develop business ventures in this sector. Several initiatives were taken to prospect new resources and develop the production chain, including the mining of these mineral assets around the world, but some factors of uncertainties, including current low prices, increased the challenge of transforming the current resources into deposits or productive mines. Thus, analyzing the competitiveness of advanced projects becomes indispensable. This work has the objective of introducing a new methodology of competitiveness analysis, where some variables are considered as main factors that can contribute strongly to make unfeasible a mining enterprise for the use of rare earth elements (REE) with this methodology, which is quite practical and reproducible, it was possible to verify some real facts, such as: the fact that the Lynas Mount Weld CLD (AUS) Project is resilient to the uncertainties of the RE sector, at the same time as the Molycorp Project is facing major financial difficulties (under judicial reorganization). It was also possible to verify that the Araxá Project of CBMM in Brazil is one of the most competitive in this country. Thus, we contribute to the existing literature, providing a new methodology for competitiveness analysis in rare earth mining.

Mining disease state converters for medical intervention of diseases.

PubMed

Dong, Guozhu; Duan, Lei; Tang, Changjie

2010-02-01

In applications such as gene therapy and drug design, a key goal is to convert the disease state of diseased objects from an undesirable state into a desirable one. Such conversions may be achieved by changing the values of some attributes of the objects. For example, in gene therapy one may convert cancerous cells to normal ones by changing some genes' expression level from low to high or from high to low. In this paper, we define the disease state conversion problem as the discovery of disease state converters; a disease state converter is a small set of attribute value changes that may change an object's disease state from undesirable into desirable. We consider two variants of this problem: personalized disease state converter mining mines disease state converters for a given individual patient with a given disease, and universal disease state converter mining mines disease state converters for all samples with a given disease. We propose a DSCMiner algorithm to discover small and highly effective disease state converters. Since real-life medical experiments on living diseased instances are expensive and time consuming, we use classifiers trained from the datasets of given diseases to evaluate the quality of discovered converter sets. The effectiveness of a disease state converter is measured by the percentage of objects that are successfully converted from undesirable state into desirable state as deemed by state-of-the-art classifiers. We use experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of our algorithm and to show its effectiveness. We also discuss possible research directions for extensions and improvements. We note that the disease state conversion problem also has applications in customer retention, criminal rehabilitation, and company turn-around, where the goal is to convert class membership of objects whose class is an undesirable class.

40 CFR Appendix B to Part 72 - Methodology for Conversion of Emissions Limits

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 17 2014-07-01 2014-07-01 false Methodology for Conversion of Emissions Limits B Appendix B to Part 72 Protection of Environment ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (CONTINUED) AIR PROGRAMS (CONTINUED) PERMITS REGULATION Pt. 72, App. B Appendix B to Part 72—Methodology for...

40 CFR Appendix B to Part 72 - Methodology for Conversion of Emissions Limits

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... 40 Protection of Environment 17 2013-07-01 2013-07-01 false Methodology for Conversion of Emissions Limits B Appendix B to Part 72 Protection of Environment ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (CONTINUED) AIR PROGRAMS (CONTINUED) PERMITS REGULATION Pt. 72, App. B Appendix B to Part 72—Methodology for...

Data mining in soft computing framework: a survey.

PubMed

Mitra, S; Pal, S K; Mitra, P

2002-01-01

The present article provides a survey of the available literature on data mining using soft computing. A categorization has been provided based on the different soft computing tools and their hybridizations used, the data mining function implemented, and the preference criterion selected by the model. The utility of the different soft computing methodologies is highlighted. Generally fuzzy sets are suitable for handling the issues related to understandability of patterns, incomplete/noisy data, mixed media information and human interaction, and can provide approximate solutions faster. Neural networks are nonparametric, robust, and exhibit good learning and generalization capabilities in data-rich environments. Genetic algorithms provide efficient search algorithms to select a model, from mixed media data, based on some preference criterion/objective function. Rough sets are suitable for handling different types of uncertainty in data. Some challenges to data mining and the application of soft computing methodologies are indicated. An extensive bibliography is also included.

The Problem of Multiple Criteria Selection of the Surface Mining Haul Trucks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bodziony, Przemysław; Kasztelewicz, Zbigniew; Sawicki, Piotr

2016-06-01

Vehicle transport is a dominant type of technological processes in rock mines, and its profit ability is strictly dependent on overall cost of its exploitation, especially on diesel oil consumption. Thus, a rational design of transportation system based on haul trucks should result from thorough analysis of technical and economic issues, including both cost of purchase and its further exploitation, having a crucial impact on the cost of minerals extraction. Moreover, off-highway trucks should be selected with respect to all specific exploitation conditions and even the user's preferences and experience. In this paper a development of universal family of evaluation criteria as well as application of evaluation method for haul truck selection process for a specific exploitation conditions in surface mining have been carried out. The methodology presented in the paper is based on the principles of multiple criteria decision aiding (MCDA) using one of the ranking method, i.e. ELECTRE III. The applied methodology has been allowed for ranking of alternative solution (variants), on the considered set of haul trucks. The result of the research is a universal methodology, and it consequently may be applied in other surface mines with similar exploitation parametres.

Characterization of a mine fire using atmospheric monitoring system sensor data.

PubMed

Yuan, L; Thomas, R A; Zhou, L

2017-06-01

Atmospheric monitoring systems (AMS) have been widely used in underground coal mines in the United States for the detection of fire in the belt entry and the monitoring of other ventilation-related parameters such as airflow velocity and methane concentration in specific mine locations. In addition to an AMS being able to detect a mine fire, the AMS data have the potential to provide fire characteristic information such as fire growth - in terms of heat release rate - and exact fire location. Such information is critical in making decisions regarding fire-fighting strategies, underground personnel evacuation and optimal escape routes. In this study, a methodology was developed to calculate the fire heat release rate using AMS sensor data for carbon monoxide concentration, carbon dioxide concentration and airflow velocity based on the theory of heat and species transfer in ventilation airflow. Full-scale mine fire experiments were then conducted in the Pittsburgh Mining Research Division's Safety Research Coal Mine using an AMS with different fire sources. Sensor data collected from the experiments were used to calculate the heat release rates of the fires using this methodology. The calculated heat release rate was compared with the value determined from the mass loss rate of the combustible material using a digital load cell. The experimental results show that the heat release rate of a mine fire can be calculated using AMS sensor data with reasonable accuracy.

Using the Random Nearest Neighbor Data Mining Method to Extract Maximum Information Content from Weather Forecasts from Multiple Predictors of Weather and One Predictand (Low-Level Turbulence)

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-10-30

Force Weather Agency (AFWA) WRF 15-km atmospheric model forecast data and low-level turbulence. Archives of historical model data forecast predictors...Relationships between WRF model predictors and PIREPS were developed using the new data mining methodology. The new methodology was inspired...convection. Predictors of turbulence were collected from the AFWA WRF 15km model, and corresponding PIREPS (the predictand) were collected between 2013

A Data Mining Approach to Study the Impact of the Methodology Followed in Chemistry Lab Classes on the Weight Attributed by the Students to the Lab Work on Learning and Motivation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Figueiredo, M.; Esteves, L.; Neves, J.; Vicente, H.

2016-01-01

This study reports the use of data mining tools in order to examine the influence of the methodology used in chemistry lab classes, on the weight attributed by the students to the lab work on learning and own motivation. The answer frequency analysis was unable to discriminate the opinions expressed by the respondents according to the type of the…

Methodology of Estimation of Methane Emissions from Coal Mines in Poland

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Patyńska, Renata

2014-03-01

Based on a literature review concerning methane emissions in Poland, it was stated in 2009 that the National Greenhouse Inventory 2007 [13] was published. It was prepared firstly to meet Poland's obligations resulting from point 3.1 Decision no. 280/2004/WE of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 February 2004, concerning a mechanism for monitoring community greenhouse gas emissions and for implementing the Kyoto Protocol and secondly, for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Kyoto Protocol. The National Greenhouse Inventory states that there are no detailed data concerning methane emissions in collieries in the Polish mining industry. That is why the methane emission in the methane coal mines of Górnośląskie Zagłębie Węglowe - GZW (Upper Silesian Coal Basin - USCB) in Poland was meticulously studied and evaluated. The applied methodology for estimating methane emission from the GZW coal mining system was used for the four basic sources of its emission. Methane emission during the mining and post-mining process. Such an approach resulted from the IPCC guidelines of 2006 [10]. Updating the proposed methods (IPCC2006) of estimating the methane emissions of hard coal mines (active and abandoned ones) in Poland, assumes that the methane emission factor (EF) is calculated based on methane coal mine output and actual values of absolute methane content. The result of verifying the method of estimating methane emission during the mining process for Polish coal mines is the equation of methane emission factor EF.

E-Cigarette Social Media Messages: A Text Mining Analysis of Marketing and Consumer Conversations on Twitter.

PubMed

Lazard, Allison J; Saffer, Adam J; Wilcox, Gary B; Chung, Arnold DongWoo; Mackert, Michael S; Bernhardt, Jay M

2016-12-12

As the use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) rises, social media likely influences public awareness and perception of this emerging tobacco product. This study examined the public conversation on Twitter to determine overarching themes and insights for trending topics from commercial and consumer users. Text mining uncovered key patterns and important topics for e-cigarettes on Twitter. SAS Text Miner 12.1 software (SAS Institute Inc) was used for descriptive text mining to reveal the primary topics from tweets collected from March 24, 2015, to July 3, 2015, using a Python script in conjunction with Twitter's streaming application programming interface. A total of 18 keywords related to e-cigarettes were used and resulted in a total of 872,544 tweets that were sorted into overarching themes through a text topic node for tweets (126,127) and retweets (114,451) that represented more than 1% of the conversation. While some of the final themes were marketing-focused, many topics represented diverse proponent and user conversations that included discussion of policies, personal experiences, and the differentiation of e-cigarettes from traditional tobacco, often by pointing to the lack of evidence for the harm or risks of e-cigarettes or taking the position that e-cigarettes should be promoted as smoking cessation devices. These findings reveal that unique, large-scale public conversations are occurring on Twitter alongside e-cigarette advertising and promotion. Proponents and users are turning to social media to share knowledge, experience, and questions about e-cigarette use. Future research should focus on these unique conversations to understand how they influence attitudes towards and use of e-cigarettes. ©Allison J Lazard, Adam J Saffer, Gary B Wilcox, Arnold DongWoo Chung, Michael S Mackert, Jay M Bernhardt. Originally published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (http://publichealth.jmir.org), 12.12.2016.

Research on solvent-refined coal. Quarterly technical progress report, April 1, 1981-June 30, 1981

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Not Available

1981-10-01

This report describes progress on the Research on Solvent Refined Coal project by The Pittsburg and Midway Coal Mining Co.'s Merriam Laboratory during the second quarter of 1981. Alexander Mine coal was evaluated as a feedstock for major liquefaction facilities and had a yield structure similar to other reactive Pittsburgh seam coals at standard SRC II conditions. Two lots of coal from the Ireland Mine (Pittsburgh seam) were found to be of nearly the same composition and produced essentially the same yields. Two experiments in which coal-derived nonvolatile organic matter was processed without fresh coal feed indicate constant rates ofmore » conversion of SRC to oil and gas. Insoluble organic matter (IOM) remained unconverted. The naphtha and middle distillate products from the deep conversion contained less sulfur but more nitrogen than those from conventional SRC II processing. Encouraging results were obtained when a very small amount of iron oxide dispersed on alumina was added to Kaiparowits coal which cannot be processed at normal SRC II conditions without added catalyst. Subbituminous coals from the McKinley and Edna Mines were processed successfully with added pyrite but would not run when the added catalyst was removed.« less

Method for in situ biological conversion of coal to methane

DOEpatents

Volkwein, Jon C.

1995-01-01

A method and apparatus are provided for the in situ biological conversion of coal to methane comprising culturing on a coal-containing substrate a consortium of microorganisms capable of degrading the coal into methane under suitable conditions. This consortium of microorganisms can be obtained from an underground cavity such as an abandoned mine which underwent a change from being supplied with sewage to where no sewage was present, since these conditions have favored the development of microorganisms capable of using coal as a carbon source and converting coal to methane. The consortium of microorganisms obtained from such abandoned coal mines can be isolated and introduced to hard-to-reach coal-containing substrates which lack such microorganisms and which would otherwise remain unrecoverable. The present invention comprises a significant advantage in that useable energy can be obtained from a number of abandoned mine sites or other areas wherein coal is no longer being recovered, and such energy can be obtained in a safe, efficient, and inexpensive manner.

Documenting the conversion from traditional to Studio Physics formats at the Colorado School of Mines: Process and early results

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kohl, Patrick B.; Kuo, H. Vincent; Ruskell, Todd G.

2008-10-01

The Colorado School of Mines (CSM) has taught its first-semester introductory physics course using a hybrid lecture/Studio Physics format for several years. Over the past year we have converted the second semester of our calculus-based introductory physics course (Physics II) to a Studio Physics format, starting from a traditional lecture-based format. In this paper, we document the early stages of this conversion in order to better understand which features succeed and which do not, and in order to develop a model for switching to Studio that keeps the time and resource investment manageable. We describe the recent history of the Physics II course and of Studio at Mines, discuss the PER-based improvements that we are implementing, and characterize our progress via several metrics, including pre/post Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM) scores, Colorado Learning About Science Survey scores (CLASS), solicited student comments, failure rates, and exam scores.

A methodological toolkit for field assessments of artisanally mined alluvial diamond deposits

USGS Publications Warehouse

Chirico, Peter G.; Malpeli, Katherine C.

2014-01-01

This toolkit provides a standardized checklist of critical issues relevant to artisanal mining-related field research. An integrated sociophysical geographic approach to collecting data at artisanal mine sites is outlined. The implementation and results of a multistakeholder approach to data collection, carried out in the assessment of Guinea’s artisanally mined diamond deposits, also are summarized. This toolkit, based on recent and successful field campaigns in West Africa, has been developed as a reference document to assist other government agencies or organizations in collecting the data necessary for artisanal diamond mining or similar natural resource assessments.

Development and application of a complex numerical model and software for the computation of dose conversion factors for radon progenies.

PubMed

Farkas, Árpád; Balásházy, Imre

2015-04-01

A more exact determination of dose conversion factors associated with radon progeny inhalation was possible due to the advancements in epidemiological health risk estimates in the last years. The enhancement of computational power and the development of numerical techniques allow computing dose conversion factors with increasing reliability. The objective of this study was to develop an integrated model and software based on a self-developed airway deposition code, an own bronchial dosimetry model and the computational methods accepted by International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) to calculate dose conversion coefficients for different exposure conditions. The model was tested by its application for exposure and breathing conditions characteristic of mines and homes. The dose conversion factors were 8 and 16 mSv WLM(-1) for homes and mines when applying a stochastic deposition model combined with the ICRP dosimetry model (named PM-A model), and 9 and 17 mSv WLM(-1) when applying the same deposition model combined with authors' bronchial dosimetry model and the ICRP bronchiolar and alveolar-interstitial dosimetry model (called PM-B model). User friendly software for the computation of dose conversion factors has also been developed. The software allows one to compute conversion factors for a large range of exposure and breathing parameters and to perform sensitivity analyses. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Characterization of a mine fire using atmospheric monitoring system sensor data

PubMed Central

Yuan, L.; Thomas, R.A.; Zhou, L.

2017-01-01

Atmospheric monitoring systems (AMS) have been widely used in underground coal mines in the United States for the detection of fire in the belt entry and the monitoring of other ventilation-related parameters such as airflow velocity and methane concentration in specific mine locations. In addition to an AMS being able to detect a mine fire, the AMS data have the potential to provide fire characteristic information such as fire growth — in terms of heat release rate — and exact fire location. Such information is critical in making decisions regarding fire-fighting strategies, underground personnel evacuation and optimal escape routes. In this study, a methodology was developed to calculate the fire heat release rate using AMS sensor data for carbon monoxide concentration, carbon dioxide concentration and airflow velocity based on the theory of heat and species transfer in ventilation airflow. Full-scale mine fire experiments were then conducted in the Pittsburgh Mining Research Division’s Safety Research Coal Mine using an AMS with different fire sources. Sensor data collected from the experiments were used to calculate the heat release rates of the fires using this methodology. The calculated heat release rate was compared with the value determined from the mass loss rate of the combustible material using a digital load cell. The experimental results show that the heat release rate of a mine fire can be calculated using AMS sensor data with reasonable accuracy. PMID:28845058

WNA's worldwide overview on front-end nuclear fuel cycle growth and health, safety and environmental issues.

PubMed

Saint-Pierre, Sylvain; Kidd, Steve

2011-01-01

This paper presents the WNA's worldwide nuclear industry overview on the anticipated growth of the front-end nuclear fuel cycle from uranium mining to conversion and enrichment, and on the related key health, safety, and environmental (HSE) issues and challenges. It also puts an emphasis on uranium mining in new producing countries with insufficiently developed regulatory regimes that pose greater HSE concerns. It introduces the new WNA policy on uranium mining: Sustaining Global Best Practices in Uranium Mining and Processing-Principles for Managing Radiation, Health and Safety and the Environment, which is an outgrowth of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) cooperation project that closely involved industry and governmental experts in uranium mining from around the world. Copyright © 2010 Health Physics Society

Ohio's Abandoned Mine Lands Reclamation Program: a Study of Data Collection and Evaluation Techniques

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sperry, S. L.

1982-01-01

The planning process for a statewide reclamation plan of Ohio abandoned minelands in response to the Federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 included: (1) the development of a screening and ranking methodology; (2) the establishment of a statewide review of major watersheds affected by mining; (3) the development of an immediate action process; and (4) a prototypical study of a priority watershed demonstrating the data collection, analysis, display and evaluation to be used for the remaining state watersheds. Historical methods for satisfying map information analysis and evaluation, as well as current methodologies being used were discussed. Various computer mapping and analysis programs were examined for their usability in evaluating the priority reclamation sites. Hand methods were chosen over automated procedures; intuitive evaluation was the primary reason.

A Proposal for Six Sigma Integration for Large-Scale Production of Penicillin G and Subsequent Conversion to 6-APA.

PubMed

Nandi, Anirban; Pan, Sharadwata; Potumarthi, Ravichandra; Danquah, Michael K; Sarethy, Indira P

2014-01-01

Six Sigma methodology has been successfully applied to daily operations by several leading global private firms including GE and Motorola, to leverage their net profits. Comparatively, limited studies have been conducted to find out whether this highly successful methodology can be applied to research and development (R&D). In the current study, we have reviewed and proposed a process for a probable integration of Six Sigma methodology to large-scale production of Penicillin G and its subsequent conversion to 6-aminopenicillanic acid (6-APA). It is anticipated that the important aspects of quality control and quality assurance will highly benefit from the integration of Six Sigma methodology in mass production of Penicillin G and/or its conversion to 6-APA.

A Proposal for Six Sigma Integration for Large-Scale Production of Penicillin G and Subsequent Conversion to 6-APA

PubMed Central

Nandi, Anirban; Danquah, Michael K.

2014-01-01

Six Sigma methodology has been successfully applied to daily operations by several leading global private firms including GE and Motorola, to leverage their net profits. Comparatively, limited studies have been conducted to find out whether this highly successful methodology can be applied to research and development (R&D). In the current study, we have reviewed and proposed a process for a probable integration of Six Sigma methodology to large-scale production of Penicillin G and its subsequent conversion to 6-aminopenicillanic acid (6-APA). It is anticipated that the important aspects of quality control and quality assurance will highly benefit from the integration of Six Sigma methodology in mass production of Penicillin G and/or its conversion to 6-APA. PMID:25057428

Unsupervised user similarity mining in GSM sensor networks.

PubMed

Shad, Shafqat Ali; Chen, Enhong

2013-01-01

Mobility data has attracted the researchers for the past few years because of its rich context and spatiotemporal nature, where this information can be used for potential applications like early warning system, route prediction, traffic management, advertisement, social networking, and community finding. All the mentioned applications are based on mobility profile building and user trend analysis, where mobility profile building is done through significant places extraction, user's actual movement prediction, and context awareness. However, significant places extraction and user's actual movement prediction for mobility profile building are a trivial task. In this paper, we present the user similarity mining-based methodology through user mobility profile building by using the semantic tagging information provided by user and basic GSM network architecture properties based on unsupervised clustering approach. As the mobility information is in low-level raw form, our proposed methodology successfully converts it to a high-level meaningful information by using the cell-Id location information rather than previously used location capturing methods like GPS, Infrared, and Wifi for profile mining and user similarity mining.

Integrated mined-area reclamation and land-use planning. Volume 3C. A case study of surface mining and reclamation planning: Georgia Kaolin Company Clay Mines, Washington County, Georgia

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Guernsey, J L; Brown, L A; Perry, A O

1978-02-01

This case study examines the reclamation practices of the Georgia Kaolin's American Industrial Clay Company Division, a kaolin producer centered in Twiggs, Washington, and Wilkinson Counties, Georgia. The State of Georgia accounts for more than one-fourth of the world's kaolin production and about three-fourths of U.S. kaolin output. The mining of kaolin in Georgia illustrates the effects of mining and reclaiming lands disturbed by area surface mining. The disturbed areas are reclaimed under the rules and regulations of the Georgia Surface Mining Act of 1968. The natural conditions influencing the reclamation methodologies and techniques are markedly unique from those ofmore » other mining operations. The environmental disturbances and procedures used in reclaiming the kaolin mined lands are reviewed and implications for planners are noted.« less

Monitoring of the mercury mining site Almadén implementing remote sensing technologies.

PubMed

Schmid, Thomas; Rico, Celia; Rodríguez-Rastrero, Manuel; José Sierra, María; Javier Díaz-Puente, Fco; Pelayo, Marta; Millán, Rocio

2013-08-01

The Almadén area in Spain has a long history of mercury mining with prolonged human-induced activities that are related to mineral extraction and metallurgical processes before the closure of the mines and a more recent post period dominated by projects that reclaim the mine dumps and tailings and recuperating the entire mining area. Furthermore, socio-economic alternatives such as crop cultivation, livestock breeding and tourism are increasing in the area. Up till now, only scattered information on these activities is available from specific studies. However, improved acquisition systems using satellite borne data in the last decades opens up new possibilities to periodically study an area of interest. Therefore, comparing the influence of these activities on the environment and monitoring their impact on the ecosystem vastly improves decision making for the public policy makers to implement appropriate land management measures and control environmental degradation. The objective of this work is to monitor environmental changes affected by human-induced activities within the Almadén area occurring before, during and after the mine closure over a period of nearly three decades. To achieve this, data from numerous sources at different spatial scales and time periods are implemented into a methodology based on advanced remote sensing techniques. This includes field spectroradiometry measurements, laboratory analyses and satellite borne data of different surface covers to detect land cover and use changes throughout the mining area. Finally, monitoring results show that the distribution of areas affected by mercury mining is rapidly diminishing since activities ceased and that rehabilitated mining areas form a new landscape. This refers to mine tailings that have been sealed and revegetated as well as an open pit mine that has been converted to an "artificial" lake surface. Implementing a methodology based on remote sensing techniques that integrate data from several sources at different scales greatly improves the regional characterization and monitoring of an area dominated by mercury mining activities. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Literature Mining Methods for Toxicology and Construction of ...

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Webinar Presentation on text-mining methodologies in use at NCCT and how they can be used to assist with the OECD Retinoid project. Presentation to 1st Workshop/Scientific Expert Group meeting on the OECD Retinoid Project - April 26, 2016 –Brussels, Presented remotely via web.

Development and application of the Safe Performance Index as a risk-based methodology for identifying major hazard-related safety issues in underground coal mines

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kinilakodi, Harisha

The underground coal mining industry has been under constant watch due to the high risk involved in its activities, and scrutiny increased because of the disasters that occurred in 2006-07. In the aftermath of the incidents, the U.S. Congress passed the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act of 2006 (MINER Act), which strengthened the existing regulations and mandated new laws to address the various issues related to a safe working environment in the mines. Risk analysis in any form should be done on a regular basis to tackle the possibility of unwanted major hazard-related events such as explosions, outbursts, airbursts, inundations, spontaneous combustion, and roof fall instabilities. One of the responses by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) in 2007 involved a new pattern of violations (POV) process to target mines with a poor safety performance, specifically to improve their safety. However, the 2010 disaster (worst in 40 years) gave an impression that the collective effort of the industry, federal/state agencies, and researchers to achieve the goal of zero fatalities and serious injuries has gone awry. The Safe Performance Index (SPI) methodology developed in this research is a straight-forward, effective, transparent, and reproducible approach that can help in identifying and addressing some of the existing issues while targeting (poor safety performance) mines which need help. It combines three injury and three citation measures that are scaled to have an equal mean (5.0) in a balanced way with proportionate weighting factors (0.05, 0.15, 0.30) and overall normalizing factor (15) into a mine safety performance evaluation tool. It can be used to assess the relative safety-related risk of mines, including by mine-size category. Using 2008 and 2009 data, comparisons were made of SPI-associated, normalized safety performance measures across mine-size categories, with emphasis on small-mine safety performance as compared to large- and medium-sized mines. The accident rates (NDL IR, NFDL IR, SM/100) of very small and small mines in 2008 and 2009 were less than those of medium and large mines. The data indicates a heavy occurrence of very severe injuries in a number of very small and small mines. In another application which is a part of this research, the six normalized safety measures and the SPI are used to evaluate the risk that existed at mines in the two years preceding the occurrence of a fatality. This mine safety performance tracking method could have been helpful to the companies, state agency, or MSHA in recognizing and addressing emerging problems with actions that may have been able to prevent high-risk conditions, the fatality, and/or other serious injuries. The approach would have given scrutiny to the risk of mines that encompassed 74% of the fatalities during 2007-2010. In order to assess the SPI as a comparable risk measurement tool, a traditional risk approach is also developed using data embracing frequency and severity in the final equation to analyze the relative risk for all underground coal mines for the years 2007--2010. Then, the SPI is compared with this traditional risk analysis method to demonstrate that the results attained by either method provide the relative safety-related risk of underground coal mines regarding injuries and citations for violations of regulations. The comparison reveals that the SPI does emulate a traditional approach to risk analysis. A correlation coefficient of --0.89 or more was observed between the results of these two methodologies and either can be used to assist companies, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), or state agencies in target-ing mines with high risk for serious injuries and elevated citations for remediation of their injury and/or violation experience. The SPI, however, provides a more understandable approach for mine operators to apply using measures compatible with MSHA's enforcement tools. These methodologies form an all-encompassing approach that can be used to assist companies, the MSHA, or state agencies in targeting mines with high risk for serious injuries and elevated citations. Once targeted as high risk, mines can then pursue appropriate intervention to remediate their violation and/or injury experience. This research may help in plugging the gap in the safety system and better pursue the goal of zero fatalities and serious injuries in the underground coal mines.

Total Protein Content Determination of Microalgal Biomass by Elemental Nitrogen Analysis and a Dedicated Nitrogen-to-Protein Conversion Factor

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Laurens, Lieve M; Olstad-Thompson, Jessica L; Templeton, David W

Accurately determining protein content is important in the valorization of algal biomass in food, feed, and fuel markets, where these values are used for component balance calculations. Conversion of elemental nitrogen to protein is a well-accepted and widely practiced method, but depends on developing an applicable nitrogen-to-protein conversion factor. The methodology reported here covers the quantitative assessment of the total nitrogen content of algal biomass and a description of the methodology that underpins the accurate de novo calculation of a dedicated nitrogen-to-protein conversion factor.

MinePath: Mining for Phenotype Differential Sub-paths in Molecular Pathways

PubMed Central

Koumakis, Lefteris; Kartsaki, Evgenia; Chatzimina, Maria; Zervakis, Michalis; Vassou, Despoina; Marias, Kostas; Moustakis, Vassilis; Potamias, George

2016-01-01

Pathway analysis methodologies couple traditional gene expression analysis with knowledge encoded in established molecular pathway networks, offering a promising approach towards the biological interpretation of phenotype differentiating genes. Early pathway analysis methodologies, named as gene set analysis (GSA), view pathways just as plain lists of genes without taking into account either the underlying pathway network topology or the involved gene regulatory relations. These approaches, even if they achieve computational efficiency and simplicity, consider pathways that involve the same genes as equivalent in terms of their gene enrichment characteristics. Most recent pathway analysis approaches take into account the underlying gene regulatory relations by examining their consistency with gene expression profiles and computing a score for each profile. Even with this approach, assessing and scoring single-relations limits the ability to reveal key gene regulation mechanisms hidden in longer pathway sub-paths. We introduce MinePath, a pathway analysis methodology that addresses and overcomes the aforementioned problems. MinePath facilitates the decomposition of pathways into their constituent sub-paths. Decomposition leads to the transformation of single-relations to complex regulation sub-paths. Regulation sub-paths are then matched with gene expression sample profiles in order to evaluate their functional status and to assess phenotype differential power. Assessment of differential power supports the identification of the most discriminant profiles. In addition, MinePath assess the significance of the pathways as a whole, ranking them by their p-values. Comparison results with state-of-the-art pathway analysis systems are indicative for the soundness and reliability of the MinePath approach. In contrast with many pathway analysis tools, MinePath is a web-based system (www.minepath.org) offering dynamic and rich pathway visualization functionality, with the unique characteristic to color regulatory relations between genes and reveal their phenotype inclination. This unique characteristic makes MinePath a valuable tool for in silico molecular biology experimentation as it serves the biomedical researchers’ exploratory needs to reveal and interpret the regulatory mechanisms that underlie and putatively govern the expression of target phenotypes. PMID:27832067

Analysis of Availability of Longwall-Shearer Based On Its Working Cycle

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brodny, Jaroslaw; Tutak, Magdalena

2017-12-01

Effective use of any type of devices, particularly machines has very significant meaning for mining enterprises. High costs of their purchase and tenancy cause that these enterprises tend to the best use of own technical potential. However, characteristics of mining production causes that this process not always proceeds without interferences. Practical experiences show that determination of objective measure of utilization of machine in mining company is not simple. In the paper methodology allowing to solve this problem is presented. Longwall-shearer, as the most important machine between longwall mechanical complex. Also it was assumed that the most significant meaning for determination of effectiveness of longwall-shearer has its availability, i.e. its effective time of work related to standard time. Such an approach is conforming to OEE model. However, specification of mining branch causes that determined availability do not give actual state of longwall-shearer’s operation. Therefore, this availability was related to the operation cycle of longwall-shearer. In presented example a longwall-shearer works in unidirectional cycle of mining. It causes that in one direction longwall-shearer mines, moving with operating velocity, and in other direction it does not mine and moves with manoeuvre velocity. Such defined working cycle became a base for determinate availability of longwall-shearer. Using indications of industrial automatic system for each of working shift there were determined number of cycles of longwall-shearer and availability of each one. Accepted of such way of determination of availability of longwall-shearer enabled to perform accurate analysis of losses of its availability. These losses result from non-planned shutdowns of longwall-shearer. Thanks to performed analysis based on the operating cycle of longwall-shearer time of its standstill for particular phase of cycle were determined. Presented methodology of determination of longwall-shearer’s availability enables to obtain information which may be used for optimization of mining process. Knowledge of particular phases of longwall-shearer’s operation, in which reduced availability occurs, allows to direct the repairing actions exactly to these regions. Developed methodology and obtained results create great opportunities for practical application and improvement of effectiveness of underground exploitation.

MinePath: Mining for Phenotype Differential Sub-paths in Molecular Pathways.

PubMed

Koumakis, Lefteris; Kanterakis, Alexandros; Kartsaki, Evgenia; Chatzimina, Maria; Zervakis, Michalis; Tsiknakis, Manolis; Vassou, Despoina; Kafetzopoulos, Dimitris; Marias, Kostas; Moustakis, Vassilis; Potamias, George

2016-11-01

Pathway analysis methodologies couple traditional gene expression analysis with knowledge encoded in established molecular pathway networks, offering a promising approach towards the biological interpretation of phenotype differentiating genes. Early pathway analysis methodologies, named as gene set analysis (GSA), view pathways just as plain lists of genes without taking into account either the underlying pathway network topology or the involved gene regulatory relations. These approaches, even if they achieve computational efficiency and simplicity, consider pathways that involve the same genes as equivalent in terms of their gene enrichment characteristics. Most recent pathway analysis approaches take into account the underlying gene regulatory relations by examining their consistency with gene expression profiles and computing a score for each profile. Even with this approach, assessing and scoring single-relations limits the ability to reveal key gene regulation mechanisms hidden in longer pathway sub-paths. We introduce MinePath, a pathway analysis methodology that addresses and overcomes the aforementioned problems. MinePath facilitates the decomposition of pathways into their constituent sub-paths. Decomposition leads to the transformation of single-relations to complex regulation sub-paths. Regulation sub-paths are then matched with gene expression sample profiles in order to evaluate their functional status and to assess phenotype differential power. Assessment of differential power supports the identification of the most discriminant profiles. In addition, MinePath assess the significance of the pathways as a whole, ranking them by their p-values. Comparison results with state-of-the-art pathway analysis systems are indicative for the soundness and reliability of the MinePath approach. In contrast with many pathway analysis tools, MinePath is a web-based system (www.minepath.org) offering dynamic and rich pathway visualization functionality, with the unique characteristic to color regulatory relations between genes and reveal their phenotype inclination. This unique characteristic makes MinePath a valuable tool for in silico molecular biology experimentation as it serves the biomedical researchers' exploratory needs to reveal and interpret the regulatory mechanisms that underlie and putatively govern the expression of target phenotypes.

Determination of Particular Endogenous Fires Hazard Zones in Goaf with Caving of Longwall

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tutak, Magdalena; Brodny, Jaroslaw

2017-12-01

Hazard of endogenous fires is one of the basic and common presented occupational safety hazards in coal mine in Poland and in the world. This hazard means possibility of coal self-ignition as the result of its self-heating process in mining heading or its surrounding. In underground coal-mining during ventilating of operating longwalls takes place migration of parts of airflow to goaf with caving. In a case when in these goaf a coal susceptible to selfignition occurs, then the airflow through these goaf may influence on formation of favourable conditions for coal oxidation and subsequently to its self-heating and self-ignition. Endogenous fire formed in such conditions can pose a serious hazard for the crew and for continuity of operation of mining plant. From the practical point of view, a very significant meaning has determination of the zone in the goaf with caving, in which necessary conditions for occurrence of endogenous fire are fulfilled. In the real conditions determination of such a zone is practically impossible. Therefore, authors of paper developed a methodology of determination of this zone basing on the results of modelling tests. This methodology includes a development of model of tested area, determination of boundary conditions and carrying out the simulation calculations. Based on the obtained results particular hazardous zone of endogenous fire is determined. A base for development of model of investigated region and selection of boundary conditions are the results of real tests. In the paper fundamental assumption of developed methodology, particularly in a range of assumed hazard criterion and sealing coefficient of goaf with caving were discussed. Also a mathematical model of gas flow through the porous media was characterized. Example of determination of a zone particularly endangered by endogenous fire for real system of mining heading in one of the hard coal mine was presented. Longwall ventilated in the „Y” system was subjected to the tests. For determined mining-geological conditions, the critical value of velocity of airflow and oxygen concentration in goaf, conditioning initiation of coal oxidation process were determined. For calculations ANSYS Fluent software based on finite volume method, which enable very precisely to determine the physical and chemical air and parameters at any point of tested mining heading and goaf with caving was used. Such precisely determination of these parameters on the base of the test in real conditions is practically impossible. Obtained results allowed to take early proper actions in order to limit the occurrence of endogenous fire. One can conclude, that presented methodology creates great possibilities of practical application of modelling tests for improvement of the occupational safety state in mine.

A risk-based decision support framework for selection of appropriate safety measure system for underground coal mines.

PubMed

Samantra, Chitrasen; Datta, Saurav; Mahapatra, Siba Sankar

2017-03-01

In the context of underground coal mining industry, the increased economic issues regarding implementation of additional safety measure systems, along with growing public awareness to ensure high level of workers safety, have put great pressure on the managers towards finding the best solution to ensure safe as well as economically viable alternative selection. Risk-based decision support system plays an important role in finding such solutions amongst candidate alternatives with respect to multiple decision criteria. Therefore, in this paper, a unified risk-based decision-making methodology has been proposed for selecting an appropriate safety measure system in relation to an underground coal mining industry with respect to multiple risk criteria such as financial risk, operating risk, and maintenance risk. The proposed methodology uses interval-valued fuzzy set theory for modelling vagueness and subjectivity in the estimates of fuzzy risk ratings for making appropriate decision. The methodology is based on the aggregative fuzzy risk analysis and multi-criteria decision making. The selection decisions are made within the context of understanding the total integrated risk that is likely to incur while adapting the particular safety system alternative. Effectiveness of the proposed methodology has been validated through a real-time case study. The result in the context of final priority ranking is seemed fairly consistent.

Army Needs to Identify Government Purchase Card High-Risk Transactions

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-01-20

Purchase Card Program Data Mining Process Needs Improvement 11...Mining Process Needs Improvement The 17 transactions that were noncompliant occurred because cardholders ignored the GPC business rules so the...Scope and Methodology 16 Use of Computer- Processed Data 16 Use of Technical Assistance 17 Prior Coverage

Post-Qualitative Line of Flight and the Confabulative Conversation: A Methodological Ethnography

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johansson, Lotta

2016-01-01

This paper is a methodological ethnography aiming to highlight the difficulties in using conventional methods in connection with an explorative philosophy: Deleuze and Guattari's. Taking an empirical point of departure in conversations about the future with students in upper secondary school, the struggle to find a scientifically valid label…

Aero-MINE (Motionless INtegrated Energy) for Distributed Scalable Wind Power.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Houchens, Brent C.; Blaylock, Myra L.

The proposed Aero-MINE technology will extract energy from wind without any exterior moving parts. Aero-MINEs can be integrated into buildings or function stand-alone, and are scalable. This gives them advantages similar to solar panels, but with the added benefit of operation in cloudy or dark conditions. Furthermore, compared to solar panels, Aero-MINEs can be manufactured at lower cost and with less environmental impact. Power generation is isolated internally by the pneumatic transmission of air and the outlet air-jet nozzles amplify the effectiveness. Multiple units can be connected to one centrally located electric generator. Aero-MINEs are ideal for the built-environment, withmore » numerous possible configurations ranging from architectural integration to modular bolt-on products. Traditional wind turbines suffer from many fundamental challenges. The fast-moving blades produce significant aero-acoustic noise, visual disturbances, light-induced flickering and impose wildlife mortality risks. The conversion of massive mechanical torque to electricity is a challenge for gears, generators and power conversion electronics. In addition, the installation, operation and maintenance of wind turbines is required at significant height. Furthermore, wind farms are often in remote locations far from dense regions of electricity customers. These technical and logistical challenges add significantly to the cost of the electricity produced by utility-scale wind farms. In contrast, distributed wind energy eliminates many of the logistical challenges. However, solutions such as micro-turbines produce relatively small amounts of energy due to the reduction in swept area and still suffer from the motion-related disadvantages of utility-scale turbines. Aero-MINEs combine the best features of distributed generation, while eliminating the disadvantages.« less

A Clustering Methodology of Web Log Data for Learning Management Systems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Valsamidis, Stavros; Kontogiannis, Sotirios; Kazanidis, Ioannis; Theodosiou, Theodosios; Karakos, Alexandros

2012-01-01

Learning Management Systems (LMS) collect large amounts of data. Data mining techniques can be applied to analyse their web data log files. The instructors may use this data for assessing and measuring their courses. In this respect, we have proposed a methodology for analysing LMS courses and students' activity. This methodology uses a Markov…

Solar Data Mining at Georgia State University

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Angryk, R.; Martens, P. C.; Schuh, M.; Aydin, B.; Kempton, D.; Banda, J.; Ma, R.; Naduvil-Vadukootu, S.; Akkineni, V.; Küçük, A.; Filali Boubrahimi, S.; Hamdi, S. M.

2016-12-01

In this talk we give an overview of research projects related to solar data analysis that are conducted at Georgia State University. We will provide update on multiple advances made by our research team on the analysis of image parameters, spatio-temporal patterns mining, temporal data analysis and our experiences with big, heterogeneous solar data visualization, analysis, processing and storage. We will talk about up-to-date data mining methodologies, and their importance for big data-driven solar physics research.

Tunnel and Station Cost Methodology : Mined Tunnels

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

1983-01-01

The main objective of this study was to develop a model for estimating the cost of subway station and tunnel construction. This report describes a cost estimating methodology for subway tunnels that can be used by planners, designers, owners, and gov...

e-Research and Learning Theory: What Do Sequence and Process Mining Methods Contribute?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reimann, Peter; Markauskaite, Lina; Bannert, Maria

2014-01-01

This paper discusses the fundamental question of how data-intensive e-research methods could contribute to the development of learning theories. Using methodological developments in research on self-regulated learning as an example, it argues that current applications of data-driven analytical techniques, such as educational data mining and its…

A Data Warehouse Architecture for DoD Healthcare Performance Measurements.

DTIC Science & Technology

1999-09-01

design, develop, implement, and apply statistical analysis and data mining tools to a Data Warehouse of healthcare metrics. With the DoD healthcare...framework, this thesis defines a methodology to design, develop, implement, and apply statistical analysis and data mining tools to a Data Warehouse...21 F. INABILITY TO CONDUCT HELATHCARE ANALYSIS

Detection and Evaluation of Cheating on College Exams Using Supervised Classification

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cavalcanti, Elmano Ramalho; Pires, Carlos Eduardo; Cavalcanti, Elmano Pontes; Pires, Vládia Freire

2012-01-01

Text mining has been used for various purposes, such as document classification and extraction of domain-specific information from text. In this paper we present a study in which text mining methodology and algorithms were properly employed for academic dishonesty (cheating) detection and evaluation on open-ended college exams, based on document…

Content-Based Indexing and Teaching Focus Mining for Lecture Videos

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Yu-Tzu; Yen, Bai-Jang; Chang, Chia-Hu; Lee, Greg C.; Lin, Yu-Chih

2010-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose an indexing and teaching focus mining system for lecture videos recorded in an unconstrained environment. Design/methodology/approach: By applying the proposed algorithms in this paper, the slide structure can be reconstructed by extracting slide images from the video. Instead of applying…

Explosion and/or fire risk assessment methodology: a common approach, structured for underground coalmine environments / Metoda szacowania ryzyka wybuchu i pożarów: podejście ogólne, dostosowane do środowiska kopalni podziemnej

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cioca, Ionel-Lucian; Moraru, Roland Iosif

2012-10-01

In order to meet statutory requirements concerning the workers health and safety, it is necessary for mine managers within Valea Jiului coal basin in Romania to address the potential for underground fires and explosions and their impact on the workforce and the mine ventilation systems. Highlighting the need for a unified and systematic approach of the specific risks, the authors are developing a general framework for fire/explosion risk assessment in gassy mines, based on the quantification of the likelihood of occurrence and gravity of the consequences of such undesired events and employing Root-Cause analysis method. It is emphasized that even a small fire should be regarded as being a major hazard from the point of view of explosion initiation, should a combustible atmosphere arise. The developed methodology, for the assessment of underground fire and explosion risks, is based on the known underground explosion hazards, fire engineering principles and fire test criteria for potentially combustible materials employed in mines.

Unsupervised User Similarity Mining in GSM Sensor Networks

PubMed Central

Shad, Shafqat Ali; Chen, Enhong

2013-01-01

Mobility data has attracted the researchers for the past few years because of its rich context and spatiotemporal nature, where this information can be used for potential applications like early warning system, route prediction, traffic management, advertisement, social networking, and community finding. All the mentioned applications are based on mobility profile building and user trend analysis, where mobility profile building is done through significant places extraction, user's actual movement prediction, and context awareness. However, significant places extraction and user's actual movement prediction for mobility profile building are a trivial task. In this paper, we present the user similarity mining-based methodology through user mobility profile building by using the semantic tagging information provided by user and basic GSM network architecture properties based on unsupervised clustering approach. As the mobility information is in low-level raw form, our proposed methodology successfully converts it to a high-level meaningful information by using the cell-Id location information rather than previously used location capturing methods like GPS, Infrared, and Wifi for profile mining and user similarity mining. PMID:23576905

Regional price targets appropriate for advanced coal extraction

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Terasawa, K. L.; Whipple, D. M.

1980-01-01

A methodology is presented for predicting coal prices in regional markets for the target time frames 1985 and 2000 that could subsequently be used to guide the development of an advanced coal extraction system. The model constructed is a supply and demand model that focuses on underground mining since the advanced technology is expected to be developed for these reserves by the target years. Coal reserve data and the cost of operating a mine are used to obtain the minimum acceptable selling price that would induce the producer to bring the mine into production. Based on this information, market supply curves can be generated. Demand by region is calculated based on an EEA methodology that emphasizes demand by electric utilities and demand by industry. The demand and supply curves are then used to obtain the price targets. The results show a growth in the size of the markets for compliance and low sulphur coal regions. A significant rise in the real price of coal is not expected even by the year 2000. The model predicts heavy reliance on mines with thick seams, larger block size and deep overburden.

An empirical method for estimating instream pre-mining pH and dissolved Cu concentration in catchments with acidic drainage and ferricrete

USGS Publications Warehouse

Nimick, D.A.; Gurrieri, J.T.; Furniss, G.

2009-01-01

Methods for assessing natural background water quality of streams affected by historical mining are vigorously debated. An empirical method is proposed in which stream-specific estimation equations are generated from relationships between either pH or dissolved Cu concentration in stream water and the Fe/Cu concentration ratio in Fe-precipitates presently forming in the stream. The equations and Fe/Cu ratios for pre-mining deposits of alluvial ferricrete then were used to reconstruct estimated pre-mining longitudinal profiles for pH and dissolved Cu in three acidic streams in Montana, USA. Primary assumptions underlying the proposed method are that alluvial ferricretes and modern Fe-precipitates share a common origin, that the Cu content of Fe-precipitates remains constant during and after conversion to ferricrete, and that geochemical factors other than pH and dissolved Cu concentration play a lesser role in determining Fe/Cu ratios in Fe-precipitates. The method was evaluated by applying it in a fourth, naturally acidic stream unaffected by mining, where estimated pre-mining pH and Cu concentrations were similar to present-day values, and by demonstrating that inflows, particularly from unmined areas, had consistent effects on both the pre-mining and measured profiles of pH and Cu concentration. Using this method, it was estimated that mining has affected about 480 m of Daisy Creek, 1.8 km of Fisher Creek, and at least 1 km of Swift Gulch. Mean values of pH decreased by about 0.6 pH units to about 3.2 in Daisy Creek and by 1-1.5 pH units to about 3.5 in Fisher Creek. In Swift Gulch, mining appears to have decreased pH from about 5.5 to as low as 3.6. Dissolved Cu concentrations increased due to mining almost 40% in Daisy Creek to a mean of 11.7 mg/L and as much as 230% in Fisher Creek to 0.690 mg/L. Uncertainty in the fate of Cu during the conversion of Fe-precipitates to ferricrete translates to potential errors in pre-mining estimates of as much as 0.25 units for pH and 22% for dissolved Cu concentration. The method warrants further testing in other mined and unmined watersheds. Comparison of pre-mining water-quality estimates derived from the ferricrete and other methods in single watersheds would be particularly valuable. The method has potential for use in monitoring remedial efforts at mine sites with ferricrete deposits. A reasonable remediation objective might be realized when the downstream pattern of Fe/Cu ratios in modern streambed Fe-precipitates corresponds to the pattern in pre-mining alluvial ferricrete deposits along a stream valley.

Inorganic carbon and fossil organic carbon are source of bias for quantification of sequestered carbon in mine spoil

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vindušková, Olga; Frouz, Jan

2016-04-01

Carbon sequestration in mine soils has been studied as a possibility to mitigate the rising atmospheric CO2 levels and to improve mine soil quality (Vindu\\vsková and Frouz, 2013). Moreover, these soils offer an unique opportunity to study soil carbon dynamics using the chronosequence approach (using a set of sites of different age on similar parent material). However, quantification of sequestered carbon in mine soils is often complicated by fossil organic carbon (e.g., from coal or kerogen) or inorganic carbon present in the spoil. We present a methodology for quantification of both of these common constituents of mine soils. Our recommendations are based on experiments done on post-mining soils in Sokolov basin, Czech Republic. Here, fossil organic carbon is present mainly as kerogen Type I and II and represents 2-6 wt.% C in these soils. Inorganic carbon in these soils is present mainly as siderite (FeCO3), calcite (CaCO3), and dolomite (CaMg(CO3)2). All of these carbonates are often found in the overburden of coal seams thus being a common constituent of post-mining soils in the world. Vindu\\vsková O, Frouz J, 2013. Soil carbon accumulation after open-cast coal and oil shale mining in Northern Hemisphere: a quantitative review. ENVIRONMENTAL EARTH SCIENCES, 69: 1685-1698. Vindu\\vsková O, Dvořáček V, Prohasková A, Frouz J. 2014. Distinguishing recent and fossil organic matter - A critical step in evaluation of post-mining soil development - using near infrared spectroscopy. ECOLOGICAL ENGINEERING. 73: 643-648. Vindu\\vsková O, Sebag D, Cailleau G, Brus J, Frouz J. 2015. Methodological comparison for quantitative analysis of fossil and recently derived carbon in mine soils with high content of aliphatic kerogen. ORGANIC GEOCHEMISTRY, 89-90:14-22.

Application of process mining to assess the data quality of routinely collected time-based performance data sourced from electronic health records by validating process conformance.

PubMed

Perimal-Lewis, Lua; Teubner, David; Hakendorf, Paul; Horwood, Chris

2016-12-01

Effective and accurate use of routinely collected health data to produce Key Performance Indicator reporting is dependent on the underlying data quality. In this research, Process Mining methodology and tools were leveraged to assess the data quality of time-based Emergency Department data sourced from electronic health records. This research was done working closely with the domain experts to validate the process models. The hospital patient journey model was used to assess flow abnormalities which resulted from incorrect timestamp data used in time-based performance metrics. The research demonstrated process mining as a feasible methodology to assess data quality of time-based hospital performance metrics. The insight gained from this research enabled appropriate corrective actions to be put in place to address the data quality issues. © The Author(s) 2015.

Health and ecological hazards due to natural radioactivity in soil from mining areas of Nasarawa State, Nigeria.

PubMed

Aliyu, Abubakar Sadiq; Ibrahim, Umar; Akpa, Chidozie Timothy; Garba, Nuraddeen Nasiru; Ramli, Ahmad Termizi

2015-01-01

Nasarawa State is located in north central Nigeria and it is known as Nigeria's home of solid minerals. It is endowed with barite, copper, zinc, tantalite and granite. Continuous releases of mining waste and tailings into the biosphere may result in a build-up of radionuclides in air, water and soil. This work therefore aims to measure the activity concentration levels of primordial radionuclides in the soil/sediment samples collected from selected mines of the mining areas of Nasarawa State. The paper also assesses the radiological and radio ecological impacts of mining activities on the residents of mining areas and their environment. The activity concentrations of primordial radionuclides ((226)Ra, (232)Th and (40)K) in the surface soils/sediment samples were determined using sodium iodide-thallium gamma spectroscopy. Seven major mines were considered with 21 samples taken from each of the mines for radiochemistry analysis. The human health hazard assessment was conducted using regulatory methodologies set by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, while the radio ecological impact assessment was conducted using the ERICA tool v. 1.2. The result shows that the activity concentrations of (40)K in the water ways of the Akiri copper and the Azara barite mines are 60 and 67% higher than the world average value for (40)K, respectively. In all mines, the annual effective dose rates (mSv y(-1)) were less than unity, and a maximum annual gonadal dose of 0.58 mSv y(-1) is received at the Akiri copper mine, which is almost twice the world average value for gonadal dose. The external hazard indices for all the mines were less than unity. Our results also show that mollusc-gastropod, insect larvae, mollusc-bivalve and zooplankton are the freshwater biotas with the highest dose rates ranging from 5 to 7 µGy h(-1). These higher dose rates could be associated with zinc and copper mining at Abuni and Akiri, respectively. The most exposed terrestrial reference organisms are lichen and bryophytes. In all cases, the radio ecological risks are not likely to be discernible. This paper presents a pioneer data for ecological risk from ionizing contaminants due to mining activity in Nasarawa State, Nigeria. Its methodology could be adopted for future work on radioecology of mining.

Extraction and Classification of Emotions for Business Research

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Verma, Rajib

The commercial study of emotions has not embraced Internet / social mining yet, even though it has important applications in management. This is surprising since the emotional content is freeform, wide spread, can give a better indication of feelings (for instance with taboo subjects), and is inexpensive compared to other business research methods. A brief framework for applying text mining to this new research domain is shown and classification issues are discussed in an effort to quickly get businessman and researchers to adopt the mining methodology.

Text Mining for Adverse Drug Events: the Promise, Challenges, and State of the Art

PubMed Central

Harpaz, Rave; Callahan, Alison; Tamang, Suzanne; Low, Yen; Odgers, David; Finlayson, Sam; Jung, Kenneth; LePendu, Paea; Shah, Nigam H.

2014-01-01

Text mining is the computational process of extracting meaningful information from large amounts of unstructured text. Text mining is emerging as a tool to leverage underutilized data sources that can improve pharmacovigilance, including the objective of adverse drug event detection and assessment. This article provides an overview of recent advances in pharmacovigilance driven by the application of text mining, and discusses several data sources—such as biomedical literature, clinical narratives, product labeling, social media, and Web search logs—that are amenable to text-mining for pharmacovigilance. Given the state of the art, it appears text mining can be applied to extract useful ADE-related information from multiple textual sources. Nonetheless, further research is required to address remaining technical challenges associated with the text mining methodologies, and to conclusively determine the relative contribution of each textual source to improving pharmacovigilance. PMID:25151493

Solid Waste Treatment Technology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hershaft, Alex

1972-01-01

Advances in research and commercial solid waste handling are offering many more processing choices. This survey discusses techniques of storage and removal, fragmentation and sorting, bulk reduction, conversion, reclamation, mining and mineral processing, and disposal. (BL)

Prediction and assessment of the disturbances of the coal mining in Kailuan to karst groundwater system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sun, Wenjie; Wu, Qiang; Liu, Honglei; Jiao, Jian

Coal resources and water resources play an essential and strategic role in the development of China's social and economic development, being the priority for China's medium and long technological development. As the mining of the coal extraction is increasingly deep, the mine water inrush of high-pressure confined karst water becomes much more a problem. This paper carried out research on the hundred-year old Kailuan coal mine's karst groundwater system. With the help of advanced Visual Modflow software and numerical simulation method, the paper assessed the flow field of karst water area under large-scale exploitation. It also predicted the evolution ofgroundwaterflow field under different mining schemes of Kailuan Corp. The result shows that two cones of depression are formed in the karst flow field of Zhaogezhuang mining area and Tangshan mining area, and the water levels in two cone centers are -270 m and -31 m respectively, and the groundwater generally flows from the northeast to the southwest. Given some potential closed mines in the future, the mine discharge will decrease and the water level of Ordovician limestone will increase slightly. Conversely, given increase of coal yield, the mine drainage will increase, falling depression cone of Ordovician limestone flow field will enlarge. And in Tangshan's urban district, central water level of the depression cone will move slightly towards north due to pumping of a few mines in the north.

Mining and Reclamation Cooperative Education Program. Progress Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barnett, Carl D.

The exemplary project was the cooperative effort of two schools in the western Kentucky coal fields to field test a program in mining and reclamation technology. Covering the first year of the project, the report describes the problem and scope of the study, the objectives pursued, the methodology, and the results obtained. The goal of the project…

Handling Dynamic Weights in Weighted Frequent Pattern Mining

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ahmed, Chowdhury Farhan; Tanbeer, Syed Khairuzzaman; Jeong, Byeong-Soo; Lee, Young-Koo

Even though weighted frequent pattern (WFP) mining is more effective than traditional frequent pattern mining because it can consider different semantic significances (weights) of items, existing WFP algorithms assume that each item has a fixed weight. But in real world scenarios, the weight (price or significance) of an item can vary with time. Reflecting these changes in item weight is necessary in several mining applications, such as retail market data analysis and web click stream analysis. In this paper, we introduce the concept of a dynamic weight for each item, and propose an algorithm, DWFPM (dynamic weighted frequent pattern mining), that makes use of this concept. Our algorithm can address situations where the weight (price or significance) of an item varies dynamically. It exploits a pattern growth mining technique to avoid the level-wise candidate set generation-and-test methodology. Furthermore, it requires only one database scan, so it is eligible for use in stream data mining. An extensive performance analysis shows that our algorithm is efficient and scalable for WFP mining using dynamic weights.

Mining Predictors of Success in Air Force Flight Training Regiments via Semantic Analysis of Instructor Evaluations

DTIC Science & Technology

2018-03-01

We apply our methodology to the criticism text written in the flight-training program student evaluations in order to construct a model that...factors. We apply our methodology to the criticism text written in the flight-training program student evaluations in order to construct a model...9 D. BINARY CLASSIFICATION AND FEATURE SELECTION ..........11 III. METHODOLOGY

The Spatial Assessment of the Current Seismic Hazard State for Hard Rock Underground Mines

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wesseloo, Johan

2018-06-01

Mining-induced seismic hazard assessment is an important component in the management of safety and financial risk in mines. As the seismic hazard is a response to the mining activity, it is non-stationary and variable both in space and time. This paper presents an approach for implementing a probabilistic seismic hazard assessment to assess the current hazard state of a mine. Each of the components of the probabilistic seismic hazard assessment is considered within the context of hard rock underground mines. The focus of this paper is the assessment of the in-mine hazard distribution and does not consider the hazard to nearby public or structures. A rating system and methodologies to present hazard maps, for the purpose of communicating to different stakeholders in the mine, i.e. mine managers, technical personnel and the work force, are developed. The approach allows one to update the assessment with relative ease and within short time periods as new data become available, enabling the monitoring of the spatial and temporal change in the seismic hazard.

Sustainable mineral resources management: from regional mineral resources exploration to spatial contamination risk assessment of mining

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jordan, Gyozo

2009-07-01

Wide-spread environmental contamination associated with historic mining in Europe has triggered social responses to improve related environmental legislation, the environmental assessment and management methods for the mining industry. Mining has some unique features such as natural background contamination associated with mineral deposits, industrial activities and contamination in the three-dimensional subsurface space, problem of long-term remediation after mine closure, problem of secondary contaminated areas around mine sites, land use conflicts and abandoned mines. These problems require special tools to address the complexity of the environmental problems of mining-related contamination. The objective of this paper is to show how regional mineral resources mapping has developed into the spatial contamination risk assessment of mining and how geological knowledge can be transferred to environmental assessment of mines. The paper provides a state-of-the-art review of the spatial mine inventory, hazard, impact and risk assessment and ranking methods developed by national and international efforts in Europe. It is concluded that geological knowledge on mineral resources exploration is essential and should be used for the environmental contamination assessment of mines. Also, sufficient methodological experience, knowledge and documented results are available, but harmonisation of these methods is still required for the efficient spatial environmental assessment of mine contamination.

Predicting the graft survival for heart-lung transplantation patients: an integrated data mining methodology.

PubMed

Oztekin, Asil; Delen, Dursun; Kong, Zhenyu James

2009-12-01

Predicting the survival of heart-lung transplant patients has the potential to play a critical role in understanding and improving the matching procedure between the recipient and graft. Although voluminous data related to the transplantation procedures is being collected and stored, only a small subset of the predictive factors has been used in modeling heart-lung transplantation outcomes. The previous studies have mainly focused on applying statistical techniques to a small set of factors selected by the domain-experts in order to reveal the simple linear relationships between the factors and survival. The collection of methods known as 'data mining' offers significant advantages over conventional statistical techniques in dealing with the latter's limitations such as normality assumption of observations, independence of observations from each other, and linearity of the relationship between the observations and the output measure(s). There are statistical methods that overcome these limitations. Yet, they are computationally more expensive and do not provide fast and flexible solutions as do data mining techniques in large datasets. The main objective of this study is to improve the prediction of outcomes following combined heart-lung transplantation by proposing an integrated data-mining methodology. A large and feature-rich dataset (16,604 cases with 283 variables) is used to (1) develop machine learning based predictive models and (2) extract the most important predictive factors. Then, using three different variable selection methods, namely, (i) machine learning methods driven variables-using decision trees, neural networks, logistic regression, (ii) the literature review-based expert-defined variables, and (iii) common sense-based interaction variables, a consolidated set of factors is generated and used to develop Cox regression models for heart-lung graft survival. The predictive models' performance in terms of 10-fold cross-validation accuracy rates for two multi-imputed datasets ranged from 79% to 86% for neural networks, from 78% to 86% for logistic regression, and from 71% to 79% for decision trees. The results indicate that the proposed integrated data mining methodology using Cox hazard models better predicted the graft survival with different variables than the conventional approaches commonly used in the literature. This result is validated by the comparison of the corresponding Gains charts for our proposed methodology and the literature review based Cox results, and by the comparison of Akaike information criteria (AIC) values received from each. Data mining-based methodology proposed in this study reveals that there are undiscovered relationships (i.e. interactions of the existing variables) among the survival-related variables, which helps better predict the survival of the heart-lung transplants. It also brings a different set of variables into the scene to be evaluated by the domain-experts and be considered prior to the organ transplantation.

The Homestake Interim Laboratory and Homestake DUSEL

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lesko, Kevin T.

2011-12-01

The former Homestake gold mine in Lead South Dakota is proposed for the National Science Foundation's Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL). The gold mine provides expedient access to depths in excess of 8000 feet below the surface (>7000 mwe). Homestake's long history of promoting scientific endeavours includes the Davis Solar Neutrino Experiment, a chlorine-based experiment that was hosted at the 4850 Level for more than 30 years. As DUSEL, Homestake would be uncompromised by competition with mining interests or other shared uses. The facility's 600-km of drifts would be available for conversion for scientific and educational uses. The State of South Dakota, under Governor Rounds' leadership, has demonstrated exceptionally strong support for Homestake and the creation of DUSEL. The State has provided funding totalling $46M for the preservation of the site for DUSEL and for the conversion and operation of the Homestake Interim Laboratory. Motivated by the strong educational and outreach potential of Homestake, the State contracted a Conversion Plan by world-recognized mine-engineering contractor to define the process of rehabilitating the facility, establishing the appropriate safety program, and regaining access to the facility. The State of South Dakota has established the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority to oversee the transfer of the Homestake property to the State and the rehabilitation and preservation of the facility. The Homestake Scientific Collaboration and the State of South Dakota's Science and Technology Authority has called for Letters of Interest from scientific, educational and engineering collaborations and institutions that are interested in hosting experiments and uses in the Homestake Interim Facility in advance of the NSF's DUSEL, to define experiments starting as early as 2007. The Homestake Program Advisory Committee has reviewed these Letters and their initial report has been released. Options for developing the Homestake Interim Laboratory and evolving this facility into DUSEL are presented.

The State of Educational Data Mining in 2009: A Review and Future Visions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baker, Ryan S. J. D.; Yacef, Kalina

2009-01-01

We review the history and current trends in the field of Educational Data Mining (EDM). We consider the methodological profile of research in the early years of EDM, compared to in 2008 and 2009, and discuss trends and shifts in the research conducted by this community. In particular, we discuss the increased emphasis on prediction, the emergence…

Using Data Mining Techniques Examination of the Middle School Students' Attitude towards Mathematics in the Context of Some Variables

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Idil, Feriha Hande; Narli, Serkan; Aksoy, Esra

2016-01-01

The aim of this study is to examine middle school students' attitude towards mathematics in the context of their mathematic learning preferences using data mining which is data analysis methodology that has been successfully used in different areas including educational domains. "How do I actually learn?" questionnaire and attitude scale…

Frontiers of biomedical text mining: current progress

PubMed Central

Zweigenbaum, Pierre; Demner-Fushman, Dina; Yu, Hong; Cohen, Kevin B.

2008-01-01

It is now almost 15 years since the publication of the first paper on text mining in the genomics domain, and decades since the first paper on text mining in the medical domain. Enormous progress has been made in the areas of information retrieval, evaluation methodologies and resource construction. Some problems, such as abbreviation-handling, can essentially be considered solved problems, and others, such as identification of gene mentions in text, seem likely to be solved soon. However, a number of problems at the frontiers of biomedical text mining continue to present interesting challenges and opportunities for great improvements and interesting research. In this article we review the current state of the art in biomedical text mining or ‘BioNLP’ in general, focusing primarily on papers published within the past year. PMID:17977867

Simulation of Asymmetric Destabilization of Mine-void Rock Masses Using a Large 3D Physical Model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lai, X. P.; Shan, P. F.; Cao, J. T.; Cui, F.; Sun, H.

2016-02-01

When mechanized sub-horizontal section top coal caving (SSTCC) is used as an underground mining method for exploiting extremely steep and thick coal seams (ESTCS), a large-scale surrounding rock caving may be violently created and have the potential to induce asymmetric destabilization from mine voids. In this study, a methodology for assessing the destabilization was developed to simulate the Weihuliang coal mine in the Urumchi coal field, China. Coal-rock mass and geological structure characterization were integrated with rock mechanics testing for assessment of the methodology and factors influencing asymmetric destabilization. The porous rock-like composite material ensured accuracy for building a 3D geological physical model of mechanized SSTCC by combining multi-mean timely track monitoring including acoustic emission, crack optical acquirement, roof separation observation, and close-field photogrammetry. An asymmetric 3D modeling analysis for destabilization characteristics was completed. Data from the simulated hydraulic support and buried pressure sensor provided effective information that was linked with stress-strain relationship of the working face in ESTCS. The results of the 3D physical model experiments combined with hybrid statistical methods were effective for predicting dynamic hazards in ESTCS.

Application of metagenomic techniques in mining enzymes from microbial communities for biofuel synthesis.

PubMed

Xing, Mei-Ning; Zhang, Xue-Zhu; Huang, He

2012-01-01

Feedstock for biofuel synthesis is transitioning to lignocelluosic biomass to address criticism over competition between first generation biofuels and food production. As microbial catalysis is increasingly applied for the conversion of biomass to biofuels, increased import has been placed on the development of novel enzymes. With revolutionary advances in sequencer technology and metagenomic sequencing, mining enzymes from microbial communities for biofuel synthesis is becoming more and more practical. The present article highlights the latest research progress on the special characteristics of metagenomic sequencing, which has been a powerful tool for new enzyme discovery and gene functional analysis in the biomass energy field. Critical enzymes recently developed for the pretreatment and conversion of lignocellulosic materials are evaluated with respect to their activity and stability, with additional explorations into xylanase, laccase, amylase, chitinase, and lipolytic biocatalysts for other biomass feedstocks. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Text mining for adverse drug events: the promise, challenges, and state of the art.

PubMed

Harpaz, Rave; Callahan, Alison; Tamang, Suzanne; Low, Yen; Odgers, David; Finlayson, Sam; Jung, Kenneth; LePendu, Paea; Shah, Nigam H

2014-10-01

Text mining is the computational process of extracting meaningful information from large amounts of unstructured text. It is emerging as a tool to leverage underutilized data sources that can improve pharmacovigilance, including the objective of adverse drug event (ADE) detection and assessment. This article provides an overview of recent advances in pharmacovigilance driven by the application of text mining, and discusses several data sources-such as biomedical literature, clinical narratives, product labeling, social media, and Web search logs-that are amenable to text mining for pharmacovigilance. Given the state of the art, it appears text mining can be applied to extract useful ADE-related information from multiple textual sources. Nonetheless, further research is required to address remaining technical challenges associated with the text mining methodologies, and to conclusively determine the relative contribution of each textual source to improving pharmacovigilance.

A New Solution for Confined-Unconfined Flow Toward a Fully Penetrating Well in a Confined Aquifer.

PubMed

Xiao, Liang; Ye, Ming; Xu, Yongxin

2018-02-08

Transient confined-unconfined flow conversion caused by pumping in a confined aquifer (i.e., piezometric head drops below the top confined layer) is complicated, partly due to different hydraulic properties between confined and unconfined regions. For understanding mechanism of the transient confined-unconfined conversion, this paper develops a new analytical solution for the transient confined-unconfined flow toward a fully penetrating well in a confined aquifer. The analytical solution is used to investigate the impacts on drawdown simulation by differences of hydraulic properties, including transmissivity, storativity, and diffusivity defined as a ratio of transmissivity and storativity, between the confined and unconfined regions. It is found that neglecting the transmissivity difference may give an overestimation of drawdown. Instead, neglecting the diffusivity difference may lead to an underestimation of drawdown. The shape of drawdown-time curve is sensitive to the change of storativity ratio, S/S y , between the confined and unconfined regions. With a series of drawdown data from pumping tests, the analytical solution can also be used to inversely estimate following parameters related to the transient confined-unconfined conversion: radial distance of conversion interface, diffusivity, and specific yield of the unconfined region. It is concluded that using constant transmissivity and diffusivity in theory can result in biased estimates of radial distance of the conversion interface and specific yield of the unconfined region in practice. The analytical solution is useful to gain insight about various factors related to the transient confined-unconfined conversion and can be used for the design of mine drainage and groundwater management in the mining area. © 2018, National Ground Water Association.

Data mining for signals in spontaneous reporting databases: proceed with caution.

PubMed

Stephenson, Wendy P; Hauben, Manfred

2007-04-01

To provide commentary and points of caution to consider before incorporating data mining as a routine component of any Pharmacovigilance program, and to stimulate further research aimed at better defining the predictive value of these new tools as well as their incremental value as an adjunct to traditional methods of post-marketing surveillance. Commentary includes review of current data mining methodologies employed and their limitations, caveats to consider in the use of spontaneous reporting databases and caution against over-confidence in the results of data mining. Future research should focus on more clearly delineating the limitations of the various quantitative approaches as well as the incremental value that they bring to traditional methods of pharmacovigilance.

Theoretical approaches to creation of robotic coal mines based on the synthesis of simulation technologies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fryanov, V. N.; Pavlova, L. D.; Temlyantsev, M. V.

2017-09-01

Methodological approaches to theoretical substantiation of the structure and parameters of robotic coal mines are outlined. The results of mathematical and numerical modeling revealed the features of manifestation of geomechanical and gas dynamic processes in the conditions of robotic mines. Technological solutions for the design and manufacture of technical means for robotic mine are adopted using the method of economic and mathematical modeling and in accordance with the current regulatory documents. For a comparative performance evaluation of technological schemes of traditional and robotic mines, methods of cognitive modeling and matrix search for subsystem elements in the synthesis of a complex geotechnological system are applied. It is substantiated that the process of technical re-equipment of a traditional mine with a phased transition to a robotic mine will reduce unit costs by almost 1.5 times with a significant social effect due to a reduction in the number of personnel engaged in hazardous work.

Indirect estimation of emission factors for phosphate surface mining using air dispersion modeling.

PubMed

Tartakovsky, Dmitry; Stern, Eli; Broday, David M

2016-06-15

To date, phosphate surface mining suffers from lack of reliable emission factors. Due to complete absence of data to derive emissions factors, we developed a methodology for estimating them indirectly by studying a range of possible emission factors for surface phosphate mining operations and comparing AERMOD calculated concentrations to concentrations measured around the mine. We applied this approach for the Khneifiss phosphate mine, Syria, and the Al-Hassa and Al-Abyad phosphate mines, Jordan. The work accounts for numerous model unknowns and parameter uncertainties by applying prudent assumptions concerning the parameter values. Our results suggest that the net mining operations (bulldozing, grading and dragline) contribute rather little to ambient TSP concentrations in comparison to phosphate processing and transport. Based on our results, the common practice of deriving the emission rates for phosphate mining operations from the US EPA emission factors for surface coal mining or from the default emission factor of the EEA seems to be reasonable. Yet, since multiple factors affect dispersion from surface phosphate mines, a range of emission factors, rather than only a single value, was found to satisfy the model performance. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Types of Informal Learning in Cross-Organizational Collegial Conversations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wilson, Daniel Gray; Hartung, Kyle

2015-01-01

Purpose: This paper aims to gather empirical evidence for what colleagues from different organizations reported they learned from informal professional learning conversations. Informal learning conversations with colleagues is a powerful yet understudied source of self-directed, professional development. Design/methodology/approach: This study of…

Vocabulary Explanations in CLIL Classrooms: A Conversation Analysis Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morton, Tom

2015-01-01

This article uses a conversation analysis methodology to examine how lexical Focus on Form is interactionally accomplished in teachers' vocabulary explanations in secondary Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) classrooms. Recent conversation-analytic work has focused on the interactional organisation of vocabulary explanations in…

Statistical data mining of streaming motion data for fall detection in assistive environments.

PubMed

Tasoulis, S K; Doukas, C N; Maglogiannis, I; Plagianakos, V P

2011-01-01

The analysis of human motion data is interesting for the purpose of activity recognition or emergency event detection, especially in the case of elderly or disabled people living independently in their homes. Several techniques have been proposed for identifying such distress situations using either motion, audio or video sensors on the monitored subject (wearable sensors) or the surrounding environment. The output of such sensors is data streams that require real time recognition, especially in emergency situations, thus traditional classification approaches may not be applicable for immediate alarm triggering or fall prevention. This paper presents a statistical mining methodology that may be used for the specific problem of real time fall detection. Visual data captured from the user's environment, using overhead cameras along with motion data are collected from accelerometers on the subject's body and are fed to the fall detection system. The paper includes the details of the stream data mining methodology incorporated in the system along with an initial evaluation of the achieved accuracy in detecting falls.

Web-Based Collaborative Writing in L2 Contexts: Methodological Insights from Text Mining

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yim, Soobin; Warschauer, Mark

2017-01-01

The increasingly widespread use of social software (e.g., Wikis, Google Docs) in second language (L2) settings has brought a renewed attention to collaborative writing. Although the current methodological approaches to examining collaborative writing are valuable to understand L2 students' interactional patterns or perceived experiences, they can…

Research Design Becomes Research Reality: Colorado School of Mines Implements Research Methodology for the Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education. Research Brief

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Loshbaugh, Heidi; Streveler, Ruth; Breaux, Kimberley

2007-01-01

The Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education was founded in 2003 with five collaborating institutions. A multi-institutional, multi-year grant offers many opportunities for the demands of reality to interfere with design goals. In particular, at Colorado School of Mines (CSM) student demographics required adjustment of the original APS…

Exotic grasslands on reclaimed midwestern coal mines: An ornithological perspective

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Scott, P.E.; Lima, S.L.

The largest grasslands in Indiana and Illinois are on reclaimed surface coal mines, which are numerous in the Illinois Coal Basin. The reclamation goal of establishing a vegetation cover with inexpensive, hardy exotic grass species (e.g., tall fescue, smooth brome) inadvertently created persistent, large grassland bird refuges. We review research documenting the importance of these sites for native prairie birds. On mines, grassland specialist birds (restricted to grassland throughout their range) prefer sites dominated by exotic grasses to those rich in forbs, whereas nonspecialist bird species show no significant preference. Midwestern mine grasslands potentially could be converted into landscapes thatmore » include native warm-season grasses and forbs adapted to the relatively dry, poor soil conditions, in addition to the present successful exotic grass stands. A key question is whether native mixtures will resist conversion to forb-rich or woody growth over the long term, as the exotic grasses have done.« less

A Conversation Analytic Study on Teaching Moments Observed in Free Conversations between Japanese and American Friends

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nagai, Ayako

2011-01-01

Utilizing the methodology of Conversation Analysis (CA), this study examines teaching moments observed in free conversations by pairs of Japanese and American friends. CA's detailed turn-by-turn analysis reveals that teaching of vocabulary, idioms, and culture occurs when native speakers orient to the non-nativeness of the other speakers.…

Screening and prioritisation of chemical risks from metal mining operations, identifying exposure media of concern.

PubMed

Pan, Jilang; Oates, Christopher J; Ihlenfeld, Christian; Plant, Jane A; Voulvoulis, Nikolaos

2010-04-01

Metals have been central to the development of human civilisation from the Bronze Age to modern times, although in the past, metal mining and smelting have been the cause of serious environmental pollution with the potential to harm human health. Despite problems from artisanal mining in some developing countries, modern mining to Western standards now uses the best available mining technology combined with environmental monitoring, mitigation and remediation measures to limit emissions to the environment. This paper develops risk screening and prioritisation methods previously used for contaminated land on military and civilian sites and engineering systems for the analysis and prioritisation of chemical risks from modern metal mining operations. It uses hierarchical holographic modelling and multi-criteria decision making to analyse and prioritise the risks from potentially hazardous inorganic chemical substances released by mining operations. A case study of an active platinum group metals mine in South Africa is used to demonstrate the potential of the method. This risk-based methodology for identifying, filtering and ranking mining-related environmental and human health risks can be used to identify exposure media of greatest concern to inform risk management. It also provides a practical decision-making tool for mine acquisition and helps to communicate risk to all members of mining operation teams.

Stream biological surveys - self-defense for coal mine operators

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Hampton, E.L.; Pennington, W.L.; Lackey, J.L.

1979-12-01

According to Section 779.20 of the Permanent Regulatory Program Regulations, Surface Coal Mining and Reclamation Operations, Department of the Interior, office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, coal mine operators must provide information on fish and wildlife resources in order to obtain mining permits. Although considered to be a liability by many mine operators, stream biological surveys can, in reality, become a significant asset. When combined with appropriate water quality measurements, stream biological surveys can adequately assess a stream's health. Although initially adding cost, stream biological surveys can actually save money and potential litigation during the mining period. However, streammore » biological surveys must be conducted before any mining activity is initiated and should continue on a periodic basis thereafter. Only in this manner can mine operators be assured that biological measurements made on streams affected by their operation are accurate reflections of pre- and post-mining conditions. Armed with this vital information, mine operators have a basis to defend against any unjustified claims that their operations are having deleterious effects on the stream in question. This paper addresses the purpose, scope, methodology, and interpretation of results of stream biological surveys. Additionally, methods for utilizing information from stream biological surveys will be stressed.« less

Comment on `Magnitude conversion problem using general orthogonal regression' by H. R. Wason, Ranjit Das and M. L. Sharma, (Geophys. J. Int., 190, 1091-1096)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gasperini, Paolo; Lolli, Barbara

2014-01-01

The argument proposed by Wason et al. that the conversion of magnitudes from a scale (e.g. Ms or mb) to another (e.g. Mw), using the coefficients computed by the general orthogonal regression method (Fuller) is biased if the observed values of the predictor (independent) variable are used in the equation as well as the methodology they suggest to estimate the supposedly true values of the predictor variable are wrong for a number of theoretical and empirical reasons. Hence, we advise against the use of such methodology for magnitude conversions.

Changes in the Extent of Surface Mining and Reclamation in the Central Appalachians Detected Using a 1976-2006 Landsat Time Series

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Townsend, Philip A.; Helmers, David P.; Kingdon, Clayton C.; McNeil, Brenden E.; de Beurs, Kirsten M.; Eshleman, Keith N.

2009-01-01

Surface mining and reclamation is the dominant driver of land cover land use change (LCLUC) in the Central Appalachian Mountain region of the Eastern U.S. Accurate quantification of the extent of mining activities is important for assessing how this LCLUC affects ecosystem services such as aesthetics, biodiversity, and mitigation of flooding.We used Landsat imagery from 1976, 1987, 1999 and 2006 to map the extent of surface mines and mine reclamation for eight large watersheds in the Central Appalachian region of West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. We employed standard image processing techniques in conjunction with a temporal decision tree and GIS maps of mine permits and wetlands to map active and reclaimed mines and track changes through time. For the entire study area, active surface mine extent was highest in 1976, prior to implementation of the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act in 1977, with 1.76% of the study area in active mines, declining to 0.44% in 2006. The most extensively mined watershed, Georges Creek in Maryland, was 5.45% active mines in 1976, declining to 1.83% in 2006. For the entire study area, the area of reclaimed mines increased from 1.35% to 4.99% from 1976 to 2006, and from 4.71% to 15.42% in Georges Creek. Land cover conversion to mines and then reclaimed mines after 1976 was almost exclusively from forest. Accuracy levels for mined and reclaimed cover was above 85% for all time periods, and was generally above 80% for mapping active and reclaimed mines separately, especially for the later time periods in which good accuracy assessment data were available. Among other implications, the mapped patterns of LCLUC are likely to significantly affect watershed hydrology, as mined and reclaimed areas have lower infiltration capacity and thus more rapid runoff than unmined forest watersheds, leading to greater potential for extreme flooding during heavy rainfall events.

Changing scene highlights III. [Iowa State University

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Fassel, V. A.; Harl, Neil E.; Legvold, Sam

1979-01-01

The research programs in progress at Ames Laboratory, Iowa State University, are reviewed: hydrogen (storage), materials, catalysts, TRISTAN (their laboratory isotope separator), coal preparation, coal classification, land reclamation (after surface mining, nitinol, neutron radiography, grain dust explosions, biomass conversion, etc). (LTC)

The Interpersonal Challenges of Instructional Leadership: Principals' Effectiveness in Conversations about Performance Issues

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Le Fevre, Deidre M.; Robinson, Viviane M. J.

2015-01-01

Purpose: Principals commonly struggle to have effective conversations about staff performance issues, tending to tolerate, protect, and work around such issues rather than effectively addressing them. This article evaluates principals' effectiveness in having "difficult" conversations with parents and with teachers. Research Methodology:…

Language and Interactional Discourse: Deconstrusting the Talk-Generating Machinery in Natural Conversation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Enyi, Amaechi Uneke

2015-01-01

The study entitled "Language and Interactional Discourse: Deconstructing the Talk-Generating Machinery in Natural Conversation" is an analysis of spontaneous and informal conversation. The study, carried out in the theoretical and methodological tradition of Ethnomethodology, was aimed at explicating how ordinary talk is organized and…

Floating-to-Fixed-Point Conversion for Digital Signal Processors

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Menard, Daniel; Chillet, Daniel; Sentieys, Olivier

2006-12-01

Digital signal processing applications are specified with floating-point data types but they are usually implemented in embedded systems with fixed-point arithmetic to minimise cost and power consumption. Thus, methodologies which establish automatically the fixed-point specification are required to reduce the application time-to-market. In this paper, a new methodology for the floating-to-fixed point conversion is proposed for software implementations. The aim of our approach is to determine the fixed-point specification which minimises the code execution time for a given accuracy constraint. Compared to previous methodologies, our approach takes into account the DSP architecture to optimise the fixed-point formats and the floating-to-fixed-point conversion process is coupled with the code generation process. The fixed-point data types and the position of the scaling operations are optimised to reduce the code execution time. To evaluate the fixed-point computation accuracy, an analytical approach is used to reduce the optimisation time compared to the existing methods based on simulation. The methodology stages are described and several experiment results are presented to underline the efficiency of this approach.

Renewed mining and reclamation: Imapacts on bats and potential mitigation

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Brown, P.E.; Berry, R.D.

Historic mining created new roosting habitat for many bat species. Now the same industry has the potential to adversely impact bats. Contemporary mining operations usually occur in historic districts; consequently the old workings are destroyed by open pit operations. Occasionally, underground techniques are employed, resulting in the enlargement or destruction of the original workings. Even during exploratory operations, historic mine openings can be covered as drill roads are bulldozed, or drills can penetrate and collapse underground workings. Nearby blasting associated with mine construction and operation can disrupt roosting bats. Bats can also be disturbed by the entry of mine personnelmore » to collect ore samples or by recreational mine explorers, since the creation of roads often results in easier access. In addition to roost disturbance, other aspects of renewed mining can have adverse impacts on bat populations, and affect even those bats that do not live in mines. Open cyanide ponds, or other water in which toxic chemicals accumulate, can poison bats and other wildlife. The creation of the pits, roads and processing areas often destroys critical foraging habitat, or change drainage patterns. Finally, at the completion of mining, any historic mines still open may be sealed as part of closure and reclamation activities. The net result can be a loss of bats and bat habitat. Conversely, in some contemporary underground operations, future roosting habitat for bats can be fabricated. An experimental approach to the creation of new roosting habitat is to bury culverts or old tires beneath waste rock. Mining companies can mitigate for impacts to bats by surveying to identify bat-roosting habitat, removing bats prior to renewed mining or closure, protecting non-impacted roost sites with gates and fences, researching to identify habitat requirements and creating new artificial roosts.« less

Methodologie de la classe de conversation: Vers un enseignement de la competence a communiquer. (Methodology of the Conversation Class: Toward Education in Communicative Competence).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Perez, Marcel

This study presents a model for teaching a French conversation course on the college level. The research is based on French language classes in Quebec general education and professional colleges (CEGEP). The first part states the problem, examines several programs, describes the organization of the conversation classes, presents several language…

What Is Different about E-Books? A MINES for Libraries® Analysis of Academic and Health Sciences Research Libraries' E-Book Usage

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Plum, Terry; Franklin, Brinley

2015-01-01

Building on the theoretical proposals of Kevin Guthrie and others concerning the transition from print books to e-books in academic and health sciences libraries, this paper presents data collected using the MINES for Libraries® e-resource survey methodology. Approximately 6,000 e-book uses were analyzed from a sample of e-resource usage at…

Analysis of radon reduction and ventilation systems in uranium mines in China.

PubMed

Hu, Peng-hua; Li, Xian-jie

2012-09-01

Mine ventilation is the most important way of reducing radon in uranium mines. At present, the radon and radon progeny levels in Chinese uranium mines where the cut and fill stoping method is used are 3-5 times higher than those in foreign uranium mines, as there is not much difference in the investments for ventilation protection between Chinese uranium mines and international advanced uranium mines with compaction methodology. In this paper, through the analysis of radon reduction and ventilation systems in Chinese uranium mines and the comparison of advantages and disadvantages between a variety of ventilation systems in terms of radon control, the authors try to illustrate the reasons for the higher radon and radon progeny levels in Chinese uranium mines and put forward some problems in three areas, namely the theory of radon control and ventilation systems, radon reduction ventilation measures and ventilation management. For these problems, this paper puts forward some proposals regarding some aspects, such as strengthening scrutiny, verifying and monitoring the practical situation, making clear ventilation plans, strictly following the mining sequence, promoting training of ventilation staff, enhancing ventilation system management, developing radon reduction ventilation technology, purchasing ventilation equipment as soon as possible in the future, and so on.

Energy conservation in coal conversion. Final report, September 15, 1977--September 1, 1978. Selected case studies and conservation methodologies

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Purcupile, J.C.

The purpose of this study is to apply the methodologies developed in the Energy Conservation in Coal Conversion August, 1977 Progress Report - Contract No. EY77S024196 - to an energy efficient, near-term coal conversion process design, and to develop additional, general techniques for studying energy conservation and utilization in coal conversion processes. The process selected for study was the Ralph M. Parsons Company of Pasadena, California ''Oil/Gas Complex, Conceptual Design/Economic Analysis'' as described in R and D Report No. 114 - Interim Report No. 4, published March, 1977, ERDA Contract No. E(49-18)-1975. Thirteen papers representing possible alternative methods of energymore » conservation or waste heat utilization have been entered individually into EDB and ERA. (LTN)« less

Tracking acid mine-drainage in Southeast Arizona using GIS and sediment delivery models

USGS Publications Warehouse

Norman, L.M.; Gray, F.; Guertin, D.P.; Wissler, C.; Bliss, J.D.

2008-01-01

This study investigates the application of models traditionally used to estimate erosion and sediment deposition to assess the potential risk of water quality impairment resulting from metal-bearing materials related to mining and mineralization. An integrated watershed analysis using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) based tools was undertaken to examine erosion and sediment transport characteristics within the watersheds. Estimates of stream deposits of sediment from mine tailings were related to the chemistry of surface water to assess the effectiveness of the methodology to assess the risk of acid mine-drainage being dispersed downstream of abandoned tailings and waste rock piles. A watershed analysis was preformed in the Patagonia Mountains in southeastern Arizona which has seen substantial mining and where recent water quality samples have reported acidic surface waters. This research demonstrates an improvement of the ability to predict streams that are likely to have severely degraded water quality as a result of past mining activities. ?? Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007.

Applying data mining techniques to improve diagnosis in neonatal jaundice.

PubMed

Ferreira, Duarte; Oliveira, Abílio; Freitas, Alberto

2012-12-07

Hyperbilirubinemia is emerging as an increasingly common problem in newborns due to a decreasing hospital length of stay after birth. Jaundice is the most common disease of the newborn and although being benign in most cases it can lead to severe neurological consequences if poorly evaluated. In different areas of medicine, data mining has contributed to improve the results obtained with other methodologies.Hence, the aim of this study was to improve the diagnosis of neonatal jaundice with the application of data mining techniques. This study followed the different phases of the Cross Industry Standard Process for Data Mining model as its methodology.This observational study was performed at the Obstetrics Department of a central hospital (Centro Hospitalar Tâmega e Sousa--EPE), from February to March of 2011. A total of 227 healthy newborn infants with 35 or more weeks of gestation were enrolled in the study. Over 70 variables were collected and analyzed. Also, transcutaneous bilirubin levels were measured from birth to hospital discharge with maximum time intervals of 8 hours between measurements, using a noninvasive bilirubinometer.Different attribute subsets were used to train and test classification models using algorithms included in Weka data mining software, such as decision trees (J48) and neural networks (multilayer perceptron). The accuracy results were compared with the traditional methods for prediction of hyperbilirubinemia. The application of different classification algorithms to the collected data allowed predicting subsequent hyperbilirubinemia with high accuracy. In particular, at 24 hours of life of newborns, the accuracy for the prediction of hyperbilirubinemia was 89%. The best results were obtained using the following algorithms: naive Bayes, multilayer perceptron and simple logistic. The findings of our study sustain that, new approaches, such as data mining, may support medical decision, contributing to improve diagnosis in neonatal jaundice.

A Conversational Intelligent Tutoring System to Automatically Predict Learning Styles

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Latham, Annabel; Crockett, Keeley; McLean, David; Edmonds, Bruce

2012-01-01

This paper proposes a generic methodology and architecture for developing a novel conversational intelligent tutoring system (CITS) called Oscar that leads a tutoring conversation and dynamically predicts and adapts to a student's learning style. Oscar aims to mimic a human tutor by implicitly modelling the learning style during tutoring, and…

Empirical Models of Zones Protecting Against Coal Dust Explosion

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Prostański, Dariusz

2017-09-01

The paper presents predicted use of research' results to specify relations between volume of dust deposition and changes of its concentration in air. These were used to shape zones protecting against coal dust explosion. Methodology of research was presented, including methods of measurement of dust concentration as well as deposition. Measurements were taken in the Brzeszcze Mine within framework of MEZAP, co-financed by The National Centre for Research and Development (NCBR) and performed by the Institute of Mining Technology KOMAG, the Central Mining Institute (GIG) and the Coal Company PLC. The project enables performing of research related to measurements of volume of dust deposition as well as its concentration in air in protective zones in a number of mine workings in the Brzeszcze Mine. Developed model may be supportive tool in form of system located directly in protective zones or as operator tool warning about increasing hazard of coal dust explosion.

On Robust Methodologies for Managing Public Health Care Systems

PubMed Central

Nimmagadda, Shastri L.; Dreher, Heinz V.

2014-01-01

Authors focus on ontology-based multidimensional data warehousing and mining methodologies, addressing various issues on organizing, reporting and documenting diabetic cases and their associated ailments, including causalities. Map and other diagnostic data views, depicting similarity and comparison of attributes, extracted from warehouses, are used for understanding the ailments, based on gender, age, geography, food-habits and other hereditary event attributes. In addition to rigor on data mining and visualization, an added focus is on values of interpretation of data views, from processed full-bodied diagnosis, subsequent prescription and appropriate medications. The proposed methodology, is a robust back-end application, for web-based patient-doctor consultations and e-Health care management systems through which, billions of dollars spent on medical services, can be saved, in addition to improving quality of life and average life span of a person. Government health departments and agencies, private and government medical practitioners including social welfare organizations are typical users of these systems. PMID:24445953

U.S. metric board 1979 survey of selected large U.S. firms and industries

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

King, L. L.

1980-05-01

A mail survey of randomly chosen 202 of the 1000 largest manufacturing and mining firms, as listed by Fortune magazine, was conducted in late 1979 and early 1980. About 64 percent (112 firms) responded with useful data. Among the findings are: about 63 percent of the largest firms produce at least one metric product; about 48 percent of exported sales are of metric products; about three quarters of the firms selling metric products sell products labelled in customary and metric units (soft conversion); about half the firms selling metric products sell hard converted products (products manufactured in metric units); little corporate coordination and planning seems to accompany conversion to the metric system; about one-third of the firms see laws and reputation impeding conversion; over 50 percent see lack of customer demand as inhibiting conversion; and the most realistic time period for conversion is 10 years, the minimum time for conversion (under pressure) is three years, and the perferred time (at the firm's own pace) is eight years.

A comprehensive review on privacy preserving data mining.

PubMed

Aldeen, Yousra Abdul Alsahib S; Salleh, Mazleena; Razzaque, Mohammad Abdur

2015-01-01

Preservation of privacy in data mining has emerged as an absolute prerequisite for exchanging confidential information in terms of data analysis, validation, and publishing. Ever-escalating internet phishing posed severe threat on widespread propagation of sensitive information over the web. Conversely, the dubious feelings and contentions mediated unwillingness of various information providers towards the reliability protection of data from disclosure often results utter rejection in data sharing or incorrect information sharing. This article provides a panoramic overview on new perspective and systematic interpretation of a list published literatures via their meticulous organization in subcategories. The fundamental notions of the existing privacy preserving data mining methods, their merits, and shortcomings are presented. The current privacy preserving data mining techniques are classified based on distortion, association rule, hide association rule, taxonomy, clustering, associative classification, outsourced data mining, distributed, and k-anonymity, where their notable advantages and disadvantages are emphasized. This careful scrutiny reveals the past development, present research challenges, future trends, the gaps and weaknesses. Further significant enhancements for more robust privacy protection and preservation are affirmed to be mandatory.

The Conversion and Sustainable Use of Alumina Refinery Residues: Global Solution Examples

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fergusson, Lee

This paper introduces current industry best practice for the conversion of alumina refinery residues (or "red mud") from hazardous waste to benign, inert material. The paper will examine four neutralization methods and Basecon Technology, a sustainable conversion process. The paper will consider ways through which this converted material can be combined and processed for sustainable applications in the treatment of hazardous waste streams (such as industrial wastewater and sludges, biosolids, and CCA wastes), contaminated brownfield sites, and mine site wastes. Recent discoveries and applications, such as the successful treatment of high levels of radium in drinking water in the USA, will also be discussed. Examples of global solutions and their technical merits will be assessed.

New approach for reduction of diesel consumption by comparing different mining haulage configurations.

PubMed

Rodovalho, Edmo da Cunha; Lima, Hernani Mota; de Tomi, Giorgio

2016-05-01

The mining operations of loading and haulage have an energy source that is highly dependent on fossil fuels. In mining companies that select trucks for haulage, this input is the main component of mining costs. How can the impact of the operational aspects on the diesel consumption of haulage operations in surface mines be assessed? There are many studies relating the consumption of fuel trucks to several variables, but a methodology that prioritizes higher-impact variables under each specific condition is not available. Generic models may not apply to all operational settings presented in the mining industry. This study aims to create a method of analysis, identification, and prioritization of variables related to fuel consumption of haul trucks in open pit mines. For this purpose, statistical analysis techniques and mathematical modelling tools using multiple linear regressions will be applied. The model is shown to be suitable because the results generate a good description of the fuel consumption behaviour. In the practical application of the method, the reduction of diesel consumption reached 10%. The implementation requires no large-scale investments or very long deadlines and can be applied to mining haulage operations in other settings. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

34 CFR 300.501 - Opportunity to examine records; parent participation in meetings.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... conversations involving public agency personnel and conversations on issues such as teaching methodology, lesson... relating to the educational placement of their child, the public agency must use other methods to ensure...

34 CFR 300.501 - Opportunity to examine records; parent participation in meetings.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... conversations involving public agency personnel and conversations on issues such as teaching methodology, lesson... relating to the educational placement of their child, the public agency must use other methods to ensure...

34 CFR 300.501 - Opportunity to examine records; parent participation in meetings.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... conversations involving public agency personnel and conversations on issues such as teaching methodology, lesson... relating to the educational placement of their child, the public agency must use other methods to ensure...

34 CFR 300.501 - Opportunity to examine records; parent participation in meetings.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... conversations involving public agency personnel and conversations on issues such as teaching methodology, lesson... relating to the educational placement of their child, the public agency must use other methods to ensure...

34 CFR 300.501 - Opportunity to examine records; parent participation in meetings.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... conversations involving public agency personnel and conversations on issues such as teaching methodology, lesson... relating to the educational placement of their child, the public agency must use other methods to ensure...

Hydrochemical characterization of a river affected by acid mine drainage in the Iberian Pyrite Belt.

PubMed

Grande, J A; Santisteban, M; Valente, T; de la Torre, M L; Gomes, P

2017-06-01

This paper addresses the modelling of the processes associated with acid mine drainage affecting the Trimpancho River basin, chosen for this purpose because of its location and paradigmatic hydrological, geological, mining and environmental contexts. By using physical-chemical indicators it is possible to define the contamination degree of the system from the perspective of an entire river basin, due to its reduced dimension. This allows an exhaustive monitoring of the study area, considering the particularity that the stream flows directly into a water dam used for human supply. With such a perspective, and in order to find global solutions, the present study seeks to develop methodologies and tools for expeditious and accurate diagnosis of the pollution level of the affected stream that feeds the water reservoir. The implemented methodology can be applied to other water systems affected by similar problems, while the results will contribute to the development of the state of the art in a representative basin of the Iberian Pyrite Belt, whose pollutants' contributions are incorporated into the reservoir.

Anomaly Detection Techniques for the Condition Monitoring of Tidal Turbines

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-09-29

particularly beneficial to this industry. This paper explores the use of the CRISP - DM data mining process model for identifying key trends within...within tidal turbines with limited historical data. Using the CRISP - DM data mining methodology (Wirth & Hipp, 2000), key relationships between...indicate a change in the response of the system, indicating the possible onset of a fault. 1.2.1. CRISP - DM The CRISP - DM (Cross-Industry Standard

Water demands for expanding energy development

USGS Publications Warehouse

Davis, G.H.; Wood, Leonard A.

1974-01-01

Water is used in producing energy for mining and reclamation of mined lands, onsite processing, transportation, refining, and conversion of fuels to other forms of energy. In the East, South, Midwest, and along the seacoasts, most water problems are related to pollution rather than to water supply. West of about the 100th meridian, however, runoff is generally less than potential diversions, and energy industries must compete with other water users. Water demands for extraction of coal, oil shale, uranium, and oil and gas are modest, although large quantities of water are used in secondary recovery operations for oil. The only significant use of water for energy transportation, aside from in-stream navigation use, is for slurry lines. Substantial quantities of water are required in the retorting and the disposal of spent oil shale. The conversion of coal to synthetic gas or oil or to electric power and the generation of electric power with nuclear energy require large quantities of water, mostly for cooling. Withdrawals for cooling of thermal-electric plants is by far the largest category of water use in energy industry, totaling about 170 billion gallons (644 million m3) per day in 1970. Water availability will dictate the location and design of energy-conversion facilities, especially in water deficient areas of the West.

Validating a Finite Element Model of a Structure Subjected to Mine Blast with Experimental Modal Analysis

DTIC Science & Technology

2017-11-01

The Under-body Blast Methodology (UBM) for the Test and Evaluation (T&E) program was established to provide a capability for the US Army Test and... Evaluation Command to assess the vulnerability of vehicles to under-body blast. Finite element (FE) models are part of the current UBM for T&E methodology...Methodology (UBM) for the Test and Evaluation (T&E) program was established to provide a capability for the US Army Test and Evaluation Command

Coal Thickness Gauging Using Elastic Waves

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Nazarian, Soheil; Bar-Cohen, Yoseph

1999-01-01

The efforts of a mining crew can be optimized, if the thickness of the coal layers to be excavated is known before excavation. Wave propagation techniques can be used to estimate the thickness of the layer based on the contrast in the wave velocity between coal and rock beyond it. Another advantage of repeated wave measurement is that the state of the stress within the mine can be estimated. The state of the stress can be used in many safety-related decisions made during the operation of the mine. Given these two advantages, a study was carried out to determine the feasibility of the methodology. The results are presented herein.

Test Methodology for Protection of Vehicle Occupants against Anti-Vehicular Landmine Effects (Methodologie d’essais pour la protection des occupants de vehicules contre les effets des mines terrestres anti-vehicules)

DTIC Science & Technology

2007-04-01

1 Chapter 1 – Introduction 1 - 1 1.1 Background and Problem Definition 1 - 1 1.1.1...Background 1 - 1 1.1.2 Problem Definition 1 -2 1.2 The Objective and Approach of the HFM-090/TG-25 1 -2 1.2.1 Objective 1 -2 1.2.2 Approach 1 -2 1.3...Organization of this Report 1 -3 1.4 References 1 -3 Chapter 2 – The Mine Detonation Process and Occupant Loading 2- 1 2.1 Introduction to Mines 2- 1 2.2

Methodological Validation of Quality of Life Questionnaire for Coal Mining Groups-Indian Scenario

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sen, Sayanti; Sen, Goutam; Tewary, B. K.

2012-01-01

Maslow's hierarchy-of-needs theory has been used to predict development of Quality of Life (QOL) in countries over time. In this paper an attempt has been taken to derive a methodological validation of quality of life questionnaire which have been prepared for the study area. The objective of the study is to standardize a questionnaire tool to…

Analysis of environmental-social changes in the surrounding area of KWB Turow in the historical context

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ciesłik, Tobiasz; Górniak-Zimroz, Justyna

2018-01-01

Opencast mining of large-area lignite deposits impacts the environment, and the health and life of people living in the vicinity of the conducted mining activity. Therefore, the attempt was made to develop a methodology for identification of environmental and social changes in the Bogatynia municipality (south-western Poland), resulting from functioning of Turow lignite mine within its area. During the study of changes occurring over the years, the development of mining pit was noticed, as well as the transformations of this area and impact of the mining plant on the selected elements of environment and surrounding areas. Analogue and digital data were used for the preparation of cartographic compilations, the usefulness of which was analyzed in accordance with the guidelines contained in the standard [1]. The conducted cartographic studies allowed to learn the history of the mine together with identification of changes taking place in the municipality Bogatynia. The obtained results show the form and condition of the objects in the analyzed year, allowing for the interpretation of changes that occurred in the surrounding areas of the Turow mine. Due to the conducted activity of the mine and Turow power plant, both negative and positive aspects were noted in connection with the carrying out of mining activity in the Bogatynia municipality.

Mining EEG with SVM for Understanding Cognitive Underpinnings of Math Problem Solving Strategies

PubMed Central

López, Julio

2018-01-01

We have developed a new methodology for examining and extracting patterns from brain electric activity by using data mining and machine learning techniques. Data was collected from experiments focused on the study of cognitive processes that might evoke different specific strategies in the resolution of math problems. A binary classification problem was constructed using correlations and phase synchronization between different electroencephalographic channels as characteristics and, as labels or classes, the math performances of individuals participating in specially designed experiments. The proposed methodology is based on using well-established procedures of feature selection, which were used to determine a suitable brain functional network size related to math problem solving strategies and also to discover the most relevant links in this network without including noisy connections or excluding significant connections. PMID:29670667

Mining EEG with SVM for Understanding Cognitive Underpinnings of Math Problem Solving Strategies.

PubMed

Bosch, Paul; Herrera, Mauricio; López, Julio; Maldonado, Sebastián

2018-01-01

We have developed a new methodology for examining and extracting patterns from brain electric activity by using data mining and machine learning techniques. Data was collected from experiments focused on the study of cognitive processes that might evoke different specific strategies in the resolution of math problems. A binary classification problem was constructed using correlations and phase synchronization between different electroencephalographic channels as characteristics and, as labels or classes, the math performances of individuals participating in specially designed experiments. The proposed methodology is based on using well-established procedures of feature selection, which were used to determine a suitable brain functional network size related to math problem solving strategies and also to discover the most relevant links in this network without including noisy connections or excluding significant connections.

Intergenerational Conversations: Young Adults' Retrospective Accounts.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Williams, Angie; Giles, Howard

1996-01-01

Combines theoretical insights of communication accommodation theory and the communicative predicament model (CPM) of aging with methodological procedures of interethnic communication. Finds that older communicators in dissatisfying conversations were characterized as being underaccommodative and negatively expressive. Interprets data theoretically…

Safeguards on uranium ore concentrate? the impact of modern mining and milling process

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Francis, Stephen

2013-07-01

Increased purity in uranium ore concentrate not only raises the question as to whether Safeguards should be applied to the entirety of uranium conversion facilities, but also as to whether some degree of coverage should be moved back to uranium ore concentrate production at uranium mining and milling facilities. This paper looks at uranium ore concentrate production across the globe and explores the extent to which increased purity is evident and the underlying reasons. Potential issues this increase in purity raises for IAEA's strategy on the Starting Point of Safeguards are also discussed.

MODELING THE IMPACTS OF LAND USE CHANGE ON HYDROLOGY AND WATER QUALITY OF A PACIFIC NORTHWEST WATERSHED

EPA Science Inventory

In many parts of the world, aquatic ecosystems are threatened by hydrological and water quality alterations due to extraction and conversion of natural resources for agriculture, urban development, forestry, mining, transportation, and water resources development. To evaluate the...

Great Basin sagebrush ecosystems

Treesearch

Jeanne C. Chambers

2008-01-01

Sagebrush ecosystems exhibit widespread degradation due to a variety of causes, including invasion by exotic plants, expansion of pinyon and juniper, altered fire regimes, excessive livestock grazing, urbanization and land development, conversion to agriculture, road development and use, mining, and energy development. These ecosystems have been identified as the most...

Mapping the distribution of ferric iron minerals on a vertical mine face using derivative analysis of hyperspectral imagery (430-970 nm)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Murphy, Richard J.; Monteiro, Sildomar T.

2013-01-01

Hyperspectral imagery is used to map the distribution of iron and separate iron ore from shale (a waste product) on a vertical mine face in an open-pit mine in the Pilbara, Western Australia. Vertical mine faces have complex surface geometries which cause large spatial variations in the amount of incident and reflected light. Methods used to analyse imagery must minimise these effects whilst preserving any spectral variations between rock types and minerals. Derivative analysis of spectra to the 1st-, 2nd- and 4th-order is used to do this. To quantify the relative amounts and distribution of iron, the derivative spectrum is integrated across the visible and near infrared spectral range (430-970 nm) and over those wavelength regions containing individual peaks and troughs associated with specific iron absorption features. As a test of this methodology, results from laboratory spectra acquired from representative rock samples were compared with total amounts of iron minerals from X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. Relationships between derivatives integrated over the visible near-infrared range and total amounts (% weight) of iron minerals were strongest for the 4th- and 2nd-derivative (R2 = 0.77 and 0.74, respectively) and weakest for the 1st-derivative (R2 = 0.56). Integrated values of individual peaks and troughs showed moderate to strong relationships in 2nd- (R2 = 0.68-0.78) and 4th-derivative (R2 = 0.49-0.78) spectra. The weakest relationships were found for peaks or troughs towards longer wavelengths. The same derivative methods were then applied to imagery to quantify relative amounts of iron minerals on a mine face. Before analyses, predictions were made about the relative abundances of iron in the different geological zones on the mine face, as mapped from field surveys. Integration of the whole spectral curve (430-970 nm) from the 2nd- and 4th-derivative gave results which were entirely consistent with predictions. Conversely, integration of the 1st-derivative gave results that did not fit with predictions nor distinguish between zones with very large and small amounts of iron oxide. Classified maps of ore and shale were created using a simple level-slice of the 1st-derivative reflectance at 702, 765 and 809 nm. Pixels classified as shale showed a similar distribution to kaolinite (an indicator of shales in the region), as mapped by the depth of the diagnostic kaolinite absorption feature at 2196 nm. Standard statistical measures of classification performance (accuracy, precision, recall and the Kappa coefficient of agreement) indicated that nearly all of the pixels were classified correctly using 1st-derivative reflectance at 765 and 809 nm. These results indicate that data from the VNIR (430-970 nm) can be used to quantify, without a priori knowledge, the total amount of iron minerals and to distinguish ore from shale on vertical mine faces.

Exploring virtual mental practice in maintenance task training

PubMed Central

Bauerle, Tim; Brnich, Michael J.; Navoyski, Jason

2016-01-01

Purpose – This paper aims to contribute to a general understanding of mental practice by investigating the utility of and participant reaction to a virtual reality maintenance training among underground coal mine first responders. Design/methodology/approach – Researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's Office of Mine Safety and Health Research (OMSHR) developed software to provide opportunities for mine rescue team members to learn to inspect, assemble and test their closed-circuit breathing apparatus and to practice those skills. In total, 31 mine rescue team members utilized OMSHR's BG 4 Benching Trainer software and provided feedback to the development team. After training, participants completed a brief post-training questionnaire, which included demographics, perceived training climate and general training evaluation items. Findings – The results overall indicate a generally positive reaction to and high perceived utility of the BG 4 benching software. In addition, the perceived training climate appears to have an effect on the perceived utility of the mental practice virtual reality game, with benchmen from mines with more positive training climates reporting greater perceived efficacy in the training's ability to prepare trainees for real emergencies. Originality/value – This paper helps to broaden current applications of mental practice and is one of the few empirical investigations into a non-rehabilitation virtual reality extension of mental practice. This paper also contributes to the growing literature advocating for greater usage of accurate and well-informed mental practice techniques, tools and methodologies, especially for occupational populations with limitations on exposure to hands-on training. PMID:27594801

Fusing Data Mining, Machine Learning and Traditional Statistics to Detect Biomarkers Associated with Depression

PubMed Central

Dipnall, Joanna F.

2016-01-01

Background Atheoretical large-scale data mining techniques using machine learning algorithms have promise in the analysis of large epidemiological datasets. This study illustrates the use of a hybrid methodology for variable selection that took account of missing data and complex survey design to identify key biomarkers associated with depression from a large epidemiological study. Methods The study used a three-step methodology amalgamating multiple imputation, a machine learning boosted regression algorithm and logistic regression, to identify key biomarkers associated with depression in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Study (2009–2010). Depression was measured using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 and 67 biomarkers were analysed. Covariates in this study included gender, age, race, smoking, food security, Poverty Income Ratio, Body Mass Index, physical activity, alcohol use, medical conditions and medications. The final imputed weighted multiple logistic regression model included possible confounders and moderators. Results After the creation of 20 imputation data sets from multiple chained regression sequences, machine learning boosted regression initially identified 21 biomarkers associated with depression. Using traditional logistic regression methods, including controlling for possible confounders and moderators, a final set of three biomarkers were selected. The final three biomarkers from the novel hybrid variable selection methodology were red cell distribution width (OR 1.15; 95% CI 1.01, 1.30), serum glucose (OR 1.01; 95% CI 1.00, 1.01) and total bilirubin (OR 0.12; 95% CI 0.05, 0.28). Significant interactions were found between total bilirubin with Mexican American/Hispanic group (p = 0.016), and current smokers (p<0.001). Conclusion The systematic use of a hybrid methodology for variable selection, fusing data mining techniques using a machine learning algorithm with traditional statistical modelling, accounted for missing data and complex survey sampling methodology and was demonstrated to be a useful tool for detecting three biomarkers associated with depression for future hypothesis generation: red cell distribution width, serum glucose and total bilirubin. PMID:26848571

Fusing Data Mining, Machine Learning and Traditional Statistics to Detect Biomarkers Associated with Depression.

PubMed

Dipnall, Joanna F; Pasco, Julie A; Berk, Michael; Williams, Lana J; Dodd, Seetal; Jacka, Felice N; Meyer, Denny

2016-01-01

Atheoretical large-scale data mining techniques using machine learning algorithms have promise in the analysis of large epidemiological datasets. This study illustrates the use of a hybrid methodology for variable selection that took account of missing data and complex survey design to identify key biomarkers associated with depression from a large epidemiological study. The study used a three-step methodology amalgamating multiple imputation, a machine learning boosted regression algorithm and logistic regression, to identify key biomarkers associated with depression in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Study (2009-2010). Depression was measured using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 and 67 biomarkers were analysed. Covariates in this study included gender, age, race, smoking, food security, Poverty Income Ratio, Body Mass Index, physical activity, alcohol use, medical conditions and medications. The final imputed weighted multiple logistic regression model included possible confounders and moderators. After the creation of 20 imputation data sets from multiple chained regression sequences, machine learning boosted regression initially identified 21 biomarkers associated with depression. Using traditional logistic regression methods, including controlling for possible confounders and moderators, a final set of three biomarkers were selected. The final three biomarkers from the novel hybrid variable selection methodology were red cell distribution width (OR 1.15; 95% CI 1.01, 1.30), serum glucose (OR 1.01; 95% CI 1.00, 1.01) and total bilirubin (OR 0.12; 95% CI 0.05, 0.28). Significant interactions were found between total bilirubin with Mexican American/Hispanic group (p = 0.016), and current smokers (p<0.001). The systematic use of a hybrid methodology for variable selection, fusing data mining techniques using a machine learning algorithm with traditional statistical modelling, accounted for missing data and complex survey sampling methodology and was demonstrated to be a useful tool for detecting three biomarkers associated with depression for future hypothesis generation: red cell distribution width, serum glucose and total bilirubin.

Developing and Implementing the Data Mining Algorithms in RAVEN

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Sen, Ramazan Sonat; Maljovec, Daniel Patrick; Alfonsi, Andrea

The RAVEN code is becoming a comprehensive tool to perform probabilistic risk assessment, uncertainty quantification, and verification and validation. The RAVEN code is being developed to support many programs and to provide a set of methodologies and algorithms for advanced analysis. Scientific computer codes can generate enormous amounts of data. To post-process and analyze such data might, in some cases, take longer than the initial software runtime. Data mining algorithms/methods help in recognizing and understanding patterns in the data, and thus discover knowledge in databases. The methodologies used in the dynamic probabilistic risk assessment or in uncertainty and error quantificationmore » analysis couple system/physics codes with simulation controller codes, such as RAVEN. RAVEN introduces both deterministic and stochastic elements into the simulation while the system/physics code model the dynamics deterministically. A typical analysis is performed by sampling values of a set of parameter values. A major challenge in using dynamic probabilistic risk assessment or uncertainty and error quantification analysis for a complex system is to analyze the large number of scenarios generated. Data mining techniques are typically used to better organize and understand data, i.e. recognizing patterns in the data. This report focuses on development and implementation of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for different data mining algorithms, and the application of these algorithms to different databases.« less

Matrix Intensification Alters Avian Functional Group Composition in Adjacent Rainforest Fragments

PubMed Central

Deikumah, Justus P.; McAlpine, Clive A.; Maron, Martine

2013-01-01

Conversion of farmland land-use matrices to surface mining is an increasing threat to the habitat quality of forest remnants and their constituent biota, with consequences for ecosystem functionality. We evaluated the effects of matrix type on bird community composition and the abundance and evenness within avian functional groups in south-west Ghana. We hypothesized that surface mining near remnants may result in a shift in functional composition of avifaunal communities, potentially disrupting ecological processes within tropical forest ecosystems. Matrix intensification and proximity to the remnant edge strongly influenced the abundance of members of several functional guilds. Obligate frugivores, strict terrestrial insectivores, lower and upper strata birds, and insect gleaners were most negatively affected by adjacent mining matrices, suggesting certain ecosystem processes such as seed dispersal may be disrupted by landscape change in this region. Evenness of these functional guilds was also lower in remnants adjacent to surface mining, regardless of the distance from remnant edge, with the exception of strict terrestrial insectivores. These shifts suggest matrix intensification can influence avian functional group composition and related ecosystem-level processes in adjacent forest remnants. The management of matrix habitat quality near and within mine concessions is important for improving efforts to preserveavian biodiversity in landscapes undergoing intensification such as through increased surface mining. PMID:24058634

Matrix intensification alters avian functional group composition in adjacent rainforest fragments.

PubMed

Deikumah, Justus P; McAlpine, Clive A; Maron, Martine

2013-01-01

Conversion of farmland land-use matrices to surface mining is an increasing threat to the habitat quality of forest remnants and their constituent biota, with consequences for ecosystem functionality. We evaluated the effects of matrix type on bird community composition and the abundance and evenness within avian functional groups in south-west Ghana. We hypothesized that surface mining near remnants may result in a shift in functional composition of avifaunal communities, potentially disrupting ecological processes within tropical forest ecosystems. Matrix intensification and proximity to the remnant edge strongly influenced the abundance of members of several functional guilds. Obligate frugivores, strict terrestrial insectivores, lower and upper strata birds, and insect gleaners were most negatively affected by adjacent mining matrices, suggesting certain ecosystem processes such as seed dispersal may be disrupted by landscape change in this region. Evenness of these functional guilds was also lower in remnants adjacent to surface mining, regardless of the distance from remnant edge, with the exception of strict terrestrial insectivores. These shifts suggest matrix intensification can influence avian functional group composition and related ecosystem-level processes in adjacent forest remnants. The management of matrix habitat quality near and within mine concessions is important for improving efforts to preserveavian biodiversity in landscapes undergoing intensification such as through increased surface mining.

Energy, environmental and climate assessment with the EPA MARKAL energy system modeling framework

EPA Science Inventory

The energy system is comprised of the technologies and fuels that extend from the import or extraction of energy resources (e.g., mines and wells), through the conversion of these resources into useful forms (e.g., electricity and gasoline), to the technologies (e.g., cars, light...

Skills Conversion Project: Chapter 18, Mineral Extraction. Final Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

National Society of Professional Engineers, Washington, DC.

As part of a federal study conducted for the U.S. Department of Labor, the employment potential for displaced aerospace and defense professionals in the area of mineral extraction was examined. Mining and metallurgical engineering, the classical technical disciplines employed in the mineral extraction industry, are supplied from schools…

Mining Social Media Data for Understanding Students' Learning Experiences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Xin; Vorvoreanu, Mihaela; Madhavan, Krishna

2014-01-01

Students' informal conversations on social media (e.g., Twitter, Facebook) shed light into their educational experiences--opinions, feelings, and concerns about the learning process. Data from such uninstrumented environments can provide valuable knowledge to inform student learning. Analyzing such data, however, can be challenging. The complexity…

The Natural History of Class I Primate Alcohol Dehydrogenases Includes Gene Duplication, Gene Loss, and Gene Conversion

PubMed Central

Carrigan, Matthew A.; Uryasev, Oleg; Davis, Ross P.; Zhai, LanMin; Hurley, Thomas D.; Benner, Steven A.

2012-01-01

Background Gene duplication is a source of molecular innovation throughout evolution. However, even with massive amounts of genome sequence data, correlating gene duplication with speciation and other events in natural history can be difficult. This is especially true in its most interesting cases, where rapid and multiple duplications are likely to reflect adaptation to rapidly changing environments and life styles. This may be so for Class I of alcohol dehydrogenases (ADH1s), where multiple duplications occurred in primate lineages in Old and New World monkeys (OWMs and NWMs) and hominoids. Methodology/Principal Findings To build a preferred model for the natural history of ADH1s, we determined the sequences of nine new ADH1 genes, finding for the first time multiple paralogs in various prosimians (lemurs, strepsirhines). Database mining then identified novel ADH1 paralogs in both macaque (an OWM) and marmoset (a NWM). These were used with the previously identified human paralogs to resolve controversies relating to dates of duplication and gene conversion in the ADH1 family. Central to these controversies are differences in the topologies of trees generated from exonic (coding) sequences and intronic sequences. Conclusions/Significance We provide evidence that gene conversions are the primary source of difference, using molecular clock dating of duplications and analyses of microinsertions and deletions (micro-indels). The tree topology inferred from intron sequences appear to more correctly represent the natural history of ADH1s, with the ADH1 paralogs in platyrrhines (NWMs) and catarrhines (OWMs and hominoids) having arisen by duplications shortly predating the divergence of OWMs and NWMs. We also conclude that paralogs in lemurs arose independently. Finally, we identify errors in database interpretation as the source of controversies concerning gene conversion. These analyses provide a model for the natural history of ADH1s that posits four ADH1 paralogs in the ancestor of Catarrhine and Platyrrhine primates, followed by the loss of an ADH1 paralog in the human lineage. PMID:22859968

Development of ergonomics audits for bagging, haul truck and maintenance and repair operations in mining.

PubMed

Dempsey, Patrick G; Pollard, Jonisha; Porter, William L; Mayton, Alan; Heberger, John R; Gallagher, Sean; Reardon, Leanna; Drury, Colin G

2017-12-01

The development and testing of ergonomics and safety audits for small and bulk bag filling, haul truck and maintenance and repair operations in coal preparation and mineral processing plants found at surface mine sites is described. The content for the audits was derived from diverse sources of information on ergonomics and safety deficiencies including: analysis of injury, illness and fatality data and reports; task analysis; empirical laboratory studies of particular tasks; field studies and observations at mine sites; and maintenance records. These diverse sources of information were utilised to establish construct validity of the modular audits that were developed for use by mine safety personnel. User and interrater reliability testing was carried out prior to finalising the audits. The audits can be implemented using downloadable paper versions or with a free mobile NIOSH-developed Android application called ErgoMine. Practitioner Summary: The methodology used to develop ergonomics audits for three types of mining operations is described. Various sources of audit content are compared and contrasted to serve as a guide for developing ergonomics audits for other occupational contexts.

Conversational Russian in Russkij Jazyk Za Rubezom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morgan, Thomas W.

1976-01-01

Reviews materials relating to Russian speech which have appeared in the journal "Russkij Jazyk Za Rubezom" since its first issue in 1967. The articles reviewed are divided into three categories: the stylistics of Russian speech, specific conversation expressions, and methodology. (CLK)

MEGASTAR: The meaning of growth. An assessment of systems, technologies, and requirements. [methodology for display and analysis of energy production and consumption

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1974-01-01

A methodology for the display and analysis of postulated energy futures for the United States is presented. A systems approach methodology including the methodology of technology assessment is used to examine three energy scenarios--the Westinghouse Nuclear Electric Economy, the Ford Technical Fix Base Case and a MEGASTAR generated Alternate to the Ford Technical Fix Base Case. The three scenarios represent different paths of energy consumption from the present to the year 2000. Associated with these paths are various mixes of fuels, conversion, distribution, conservation and end-use technologies. MEGASTAR presents the estimated times and unit requirements to supply the fuels, conversion and distribution systems for the postulated end uses for the three scenarios and then estimates the aggregate manpower, materials, and capital requirements needed to develop the energy system described by the particular scenario.

Information and communication technology and climate change adaptation: Evidence from selected mining companies in South Africa

PubMed Central

Nhamo, Godwell

2016-01-01

The mining sector is a significant contributor to the gross domestic product of many global economies. Given the increasing trends in climate-induced disasters and the growing desire to find lasting solutions, information and communication technology (ICT) has been introduced into the climate change adaptation mix. Climate change-induced extreme weather events such as flooding, drought, excessive fog, and cyclones have compounded the environmental challenges faced by the mining sector. This article presents the adoption of ICT innovation as part of the adaptation strategies towards reducing the mining sector’s vulnerability and exposure to climate change disaster risks. Document analysis and systematic literature review were adopted as the methodology. Findings from the study reflect how ICT intervention orchestrated changes in communication patterns which are tailored towards the reduction in climate change vulnerability and exposure. The research concludes with a proposition that ICT intervention must be part of the bigger and ongoing climate change adaptation agenda in the mining sector.

Improving machine operation management efficiency via improving the vehicle park structure and using the production operation information database

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Koptev, V. Yu

2017-02-01

The work represents the results of studying basic interconnected criteria of separate equipment units of the transport network machines fleet, depending on production and mining factors to improve the transport systems management. Justifying the selection of a control system necessitates employing new methodologies and models, augmented with stability and transport flow criteria, accounting for mining work development dynamics on mining sites. A necessary condition is the accounting of technical and operating parameters related to vehicle operation. Modern open pit mining dispatching systems must include such kinds of the information database. An algorithm forming a machine fleet is presented based on multi-variation task solution in connection with defining reasonable operating features of a machine working as a part of a complex. Proposals cited in the work may apply to mining machines (drilling equipment, excavators) and construction equipment (bulldozers, cranes, pile-drivers), city transport and other types of production activities using machine fleet.

Method for Determining the Coalbed Methane Content with Determination the Uncertainty of Measurements

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Szlązak, Nikodem; Korzec, Marek

2016-06-01

Methane has a bad influence on safety in underground mines as it is emitted to the air during mining works. Appropriate identification of methane hazard is essential to determining methane hazard prevention methods, ventilation systems and methane drainage systems. Methane hazard is identified while roadways are driven and boreholes are drilled. Coalbed methane content is one of the parameters which is used to assess this threat. This is a requirement according to the Decree of the Minister of Economy dated 28 June 2002 on work safety and hygiene, operation and special firefighting protection in underground mines. For this purpose a new method for determining coalbed methane content in underground coal mines has been developed. This method consists of two stages - collecting samples in a mine and testing the sample in the laboratory. The stage of determining methane content in a coal sample in a laboratory is essential. This article presents the estimation of measurement uncertainty of determining methane content in a coal sample according to this methodology.

Prioritizing abandoned coal mine reclamation projects within the contiguous United States using geographic information system extrapolation.

PubMed

Gorokhovich, Yuri; Reid, Matthew; Mignone, Erica; Voros, Andrew

2003-10-01

Coal mine reclamation projects are very expensive and require coordination of local and federal agencies to identify resources for the most economic way of reclaiming mined land. Location of resources for mine reclamation is a spatial problem. This article presents a methodology that allows the combination of spatial data on resources for the coal mine reclamation and uses GIS analysis to develop a priority list of potential mine reclamation sites within contiguous United States using the method of extrapolation. The extrapolation method in this study was based on the Bark Camp reclamation project. The mine reclamation project at Bark Camp, Pennsylvania, USA, provided an example of the beneficial use of fly ash and dredged material to reclaim 402,600 sq mi of a mine abandoned in the 1980s. Railroads provided transportation of dredged material and fly ash to the site. Therefore, four spatial elements contributed to the reclamation project at Bark Camp: dredged material, abandoned mines, fly ash sources, and railroads. Using spatial distribution of these data in the contiguous United States, it was possible to utilize GIS analysis to prioritize areas where reclamation projects similar to Bark Camp are feasible. GIS analysis identified unique occurrences of all four spatial elements used in the Bark Camp case for each 1 km of the United States territory within 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100 km radii from abandoned mines. The results showed the number of abandoned mines for each state and identified their locations. The federal or state governments can use these results in mine reclamation planning.

Earth Science Research in the National Underground Science Laboratory at the Homestake Mine, South Dakota

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, J. S.; Cording, E. J.; Fairhurst, C.; Lesko, K. T.; Nabighian, M.; Silver, L. T.; Tiedje, J. M.; Wierenga, P. J.; Witherspoon, P. A.

2001-12-01

A summary of the Earth Science Workshop, Lead, South Dakota, October 4-7 2001, on the planned development of earth science research at the proposed National Underground Science Laboratory (NUSL) will be presented. The Homestake Mine in South Dakota will cease gold production in 2002. The Mine has been recommended for conversion into a NUSL by a national underground science committee and is the focus of a major (physics) proposal to the National Science Foundation. The Earth Science Workshop, associated with the Conference on Underground Science, was held to discuss the type of studies that could be conducted in the Mine and associated practical aspects such as space and time requirements. Construction of the NUSL (estimated to take approximately five years) will involve a variety of rock mechanics and geotechnical studies necessary for the design and excavation of large test chambers at depth for physics experiments, extension of access drifts, and enlargement and deepening of the Yates shaft. Hundreds of kilometers of drifts over fifty levels will be accessible during this period for geological mapping, mineral sampling, seepage quantification, mine water evaluation, seismic monitoring, and geophysical imaging. The extensive network of drifts and vertical shafts will allow installation of kilometer-scale antenna and seismograph networks for remote sensing. Another possibility is for earth scientists to collaborate with physicists in using cosmic-ray flux distributions for crustal imaging. The Homestake Mine has been in operation for over 125 years and drifts of different ages are accessible for studies of rock alternation, environment tracer migration, and hydrological studies associated with mine dewatering and mine operation. The majority of drifts will probably become inaccessible for sampling within a few years when these are sealed off from the NUSL test chambers. Monitoring equipment installed behind the bulkheads will be designed to last for decades under flooded conditions. The re-flooding process around the NUSL will be assessed carefully before implementation. Preservation of a region with multiple levels below 4,850 ft (connected by sloping ramps) for multi-drift heater tests over a 30-year period is a possibility. These tests could study heat-induced coupled processes with temperature, fluid flow, chemical transport, and mechanical deformation measurements in fractured rocks (which are in igneous and sedimentary units that have been subject to intense folding, and have been uplifted and domed by a nearby granite massif). The space around the NUSL and the access shaft will be open to a depth of 8,000 ft. This will allow long term hydrochemical/geomechanical evaluations and ecological/geomicrobiological studies in these ~2 billion years old metamorphic rocks. Underground access at these depths will facilitate additional drilling and excavation into surrounding intact rocks for multi-disciplinary research during and after the conversion of the Mine.

Descriptive Analysis and Strategic Options to Defeat Commodity-Based Threat Financing Methodologies Related to Gold

DTIC Science & Technology

2015-09-01

continue to occur in the Peruvian Andes and the low-lying Amazon basin in the environmentally sensitive and protected region of Madre de Dios . In 2013...PwC stated, “six mining companies and the small producers of the region of Madre de Dios concentrate 62% of [gold] production (PwC, 2013b, p. 16...illegal mining operations occur throughout Madre de Dios without attempts at formalization. In Madre de Dios , forests are clear cut of vegetation

Discourse Markers in Chinese Conversational Narrative

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Xiao, Yang

2010-01-01

This study examines the indexicality of discourse markers (DMs) in Chinese conversational narrative. Drawing upon theoretical and methodological principles related to narrative dimensions (Ochs & Capps, 2001), narrative desires (Ochs, 1997, 2004), and narrative positioning (Bamberg, 1997), this work proposes an integrated analytical framework for…

NPS Transit System Passenger Boardings Study: Converting Ticket Sales to Passenger Boardings.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2016-01-01

This report examines the reporting of passenger boardings (unlinked passenger trips) by NPS transit systems that use a ticket sales conversion methodology. By studying and validating the park units' passenger boarding methodology from converting tick...

Neural networks in astronomy.

PubMed

Tagliaferri, Roberto; Longo, Giuseppe; Milano, Leopoldo; Acernese, Fausto; Barone, Fabrizio; Ciaramella, Angelo; De Rosa, Rosario; Donalek, Ciro; Eleuteri, Antonio; Raiconi, Giancarlo; Sessa, Salvatore; Staiano, Antonino; Volpicelli, Alfredo

2003-01-01

In the last decade, the use of neural networks (NN) and of other soft computing methods has begun to spread also in the astronomical community which, due to the required accuracy of the measurements, is usually reluctant to use automatic tools to perform even the most common tasks of data reduction and data mining. The federation of heterogeneous large astronomical databases which is foreseen in the framework of the astrophysical virtual observatory and national virtual observatory projects, is, however, posing unprecedented data mining and visualization problems which will find a rather natural and user friendly answer in artificial intelligence tools based on NNs, fuzzy sets or genetic algorithms. This review is aimed to both astronomers (who often have little knowledge of the methodological background) and computer scientists (who often know little about potentially interesting applications), and therefore will be structured as follows: after giving a short introduction to the subject, we shall summarize the methodological background and focus our attention on some of the most interesting fields of application, namely: object extraction and classification, time series analysis, noise identification, and data mining. Most of the original work described in the paper has been performed in the framework of the AstroNeural collaboration (Napoli-Salerno).

Comparison of two drug safety signals in a pharmacovigilance data mining framework.

PubMed

Tubert-Bitter, Pascale; Bégaud, Bernard; Ahmed, Ismaïl

2016-04-01

Since adverse drug reactions are a major public health concern, early detection of drug safety signals has become a top priority for regulatory agencies and the pharmaceutical industry. Quantitative methods for analyzing spontaneous reporting material recorded in pharmacovigilance databases through data mining have been proposed in the last decades and are increasingly used to flag potential safety problems. While automated data mining is motivated by the usually huge size of pharmacovigilance databases, it does not systematically produce relevant alerts. Moreover, each detected signal requires appropriate assessment that may involve investigation of the whole therapeutic class. The goal of this article is to provide a methodology for comparing two detected signals. It is nested within the automated surveillance framework as (1) no extra information is required and (2) no simple inference on the actual risks can be extrapolated from spontaneous reporting data. We designed our methodology on the basis of two classical methods used for automated signal detection: the Bayesian Gamma Poisson Shrinker and the frequentist Proportional Reporting Ratio. A simulation study was conducted to assess the performances of both proposed methods. The latter were used to compare cardiovascular signals for two HIV treatments from the French pharmacovigilance database. © The Author(s) 2012.

Social Impact Studies: An Expository Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shields, Mark A.

1975-01-01

Analyzed are some selected studies on the social impact of resources development and construction projects including dams, highways, nuclear power plants and strip mines. The analytical and methodological problem of assessing differential impacts is stressed. (BT)

Conversations among Coal Miners in a Campaign to Promote Hearing Protection

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stephenson, Michael T.; Quick, Brian L.; Witte, Kim; Vaught, Charles; Booth-Butterfield, Steve; Patel, Dhaval

2009-01-01

Although working in a coal mine can diminish one's hearing capabilities by 50%, not until 2000 did federal laws require companies to establish noise standards in order to help prevent hearing loss among their employees. Since then, researchers have worked with safety administrators to develop effective messages promoting hearing protection and…

The 4M compaNy: Make Mine Metric Mystery. Fifth Grade Student Booklet.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hawaii State Dept. of Education, Honolulu.

This student activity manual for elementary students is designed to teach several concepts related to the metric system and measurement. Included are activities related to length, area, volume, conversion of metric units, and computation skills with decimals (addition, subtraction, and division). Cartoons are used extensively to appeal to student…

Hydrological principles for sustainable management of forest ecosystems

Treesearch

Irena F. Creed; Gabor Z. Sass; Jim M. Buttle; Julia A. Jones

2011-01-01

Forested landscapes around the world are changing as a result of human activities, including forest management, fire suppression, mountaintop mining, conversion of natural forests to plantations, and climate change (Brockerhoff et al., 2008; Cyr et al., 2009; Johnston et al., 2010; Miller et al., 2009; Kelly et al., 2010; Palmer et al., 2010). Forests...

5 CFR 532.285 - Special wage schedules for supervisors of negotiated rate Bureau of Reclamation employees.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-01-01

... industry titles 211 Oil and gas extraction. 212 Mining (except oil and gas). 213 Support activities for..., Bend, Medford, Umatilla, Multnomah Utah: Salt Lake Idaho: Ada, Canyon, Adams Washington: Spokane, Grant..., Platte, Niobrara, Converse, Natrona, Fremont, Sublette, Lincoln Utah: Beaver, Box Elder, Cache, Carbon...

5 CFR 532.285 - Special wage schedules for supervisors of negotiated rate Bureau of Reclamation employees.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-01-01

... industry titles 211 Oil and gas extraction. 212 Mining (except oil and gas). 213 Support activities for..., Bend, Medford, Umatilla, Multnomah Utah: Salt Lake Idaho: Ada, Canyon, Adams Washington: Spokane, Grant..., Platte, Niobrara, Converse, Natrona, Fremont, Sublette, Lincoln Utah: Beaver, Box Elder, Cache, Carbon...

5 CFR 532.285 - Special wage schedules for supervisors of negotiated rate Bureau of Reclamation employees.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-01-01

... industry titles 211 Oil and gas extraction. 212 Mining (except oil and gas). 213 Support activities for..., Bend, Medford, Umatilla, Multnomah Utah: Salt Lake Idaho: Ada, Canyon, Adams Washington: Spokane, Grant..., Platte, Niobrara, Converse, Natrona, Fremont, Sublette, Lincoln Utah: Beaver, Box Elder, Cache, Carbon...

5 CFR 532.285 - Special wage schedules for supervisors of negotiated rate Bureau of Reclamation employees.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-01-01

... industry titles 211 Oil and gas extraction. 212 Mining (except oil and gas). 213 Support activities for..., Bend, Medford, Umatilla, Multnomah Utah: Salt Lake Idaho: Ada, Canyon, Adams Washington: Spokane, Grant..., Platte, Niobrara, Converse, Natrona, Fremont, Sublette, Lincoln Utah: Beaver, Box Elder, Cache, Carbon...

5 CFR 532.285 - Special wage schedules for supervisors of negotiated rate Bureau of Reclamation employees.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-01-01

... industry titles 211 Oil and gas extraction. 212 Mining (except oil and gas). 213 Support activities for..., Bend, Medford, Umatilla, Multnomah Utah: Salt Lake Idaho: Ada, Canyon, Adams Washington: Spokane, Grant..., Platte, Niobrara, Converse, Natrona, Fremont, Sublette, Lincoln Utah: Beaver, Box Elder, Cache, Carbon...

Medical Professionals and Parents: A Linguistic Analysis of Communication Across Contexts.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tannen, Deborah; Wallat, Cynthia

1986-01-01

This study analyzes videotaped conversations between various family members of a child with cerebral palsy and medical professionals. The conversations are examined for information elaboration and condensation, information negotiation, as well as methodological benefits. The medical interviews elicited new information in various contexts and…

Effects of overweight vehicles on NYSDOT infrastructure.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2015-09-01

This report develops a methodology for estimating the effects of different categories of overweight : trucks on NYSDOT pavements and bridges. A data mining algorithm is used to categorize truck : data collected at several Weigh-In-Motion stations aro...

A method for estimating the probability of lightning causing a methane ignition in an underground mine

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Sacks, H.K.; Novak, T.

2008-03-15

During the past decade, several methane/air explosions in abandoned or sealed areas of underground coal mines have been attributed to lightning. Previously published work by the authors showed, through computer simulations, that currents from lightning could propagate down steel-cased boreholes and ignite explosive methane/air mixtures. The presented work expands on the model and describes a methodology based on IEEE Standard 1410-2004 to estimate the probability of an ignition. The methodology provides a means to better estimate the likelihood that an ignition could occur underground and, more importantly, allows the calculation of what-if scenarios to investigate the effectiveness of engineering controlsmore » to reduce the hazard. The computer software used for calculating fields and potentials is also verified by comparing computed results with an independently developed theoretical model of electromagnetic field propagation through a conductive medium.« less

Information Gain Based Dimensionality Selection for Classifying Text Documents

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Dumidu Wijayasekara; Milos Manic; Miles McQueen

2013-06-01

Selecting the optimal dimensions for various knowledge extraction applications is an essential component of data mining. Dimensionality selection techniques are utilized in classification applications to increase the classification accuracy and reduce the computational complexity. In text classification, where the dimensionality of the dataset is extremely high, dimensionality selection is even more important. This paper presents a novel, genetic algorithm based methodology, for dimensionality selection in text mining applications that utilizes information gain. The presented methodology uses information gain of each dimension to change the mutation probability of chromosomes dynamically. Since the information gain is calculated a priori, the computational complexitymore » is not affected. The presented method was tested on a specific text classification problem and compared with conventional genetic algorithm based dimensionality selection. The results show an improvement of 3% in the true positives and 1.6% in the true negatives over conventional dimensionality selection methods.« less

Mining balance disorders' data for the development of diagnostic decision support systems.

PubMed

Exarchos, T P; Rigas, G; Bibas, A; Kikidis, D; Nikitas, C; Wuyts, F L; Ihtijarevic, B; Maes, L; Cenciarini, M; Maurer, C; Macdonald, N; Bamiou, D-E; Luxon, L; Prasinos, M; Spanoudakis, G; Koutsouris, D D; Fotiadis, D I

2016-10-01

In this work we present the methodology for the development of the EMBalance diagnostic Decision Support System (DSS) for balance disorders. Medical data from patients with balance disorders have been analysed using data mining techniques for the development of the diagnostic DSS. The proposed methodology uses various data, ranging from demographic characteristics to clinical examination, auditory and vestibular tests, in order to provide an accurate diagnosis. The system aims to provide decision support for general practitioners (GPs) and experts in the diagnosis of balance disorders as well as to provide recommendations for the appropriate information and data to be requested at each step of the diagnostic process. Detailed results are provided for the diagnosis of 12 balance disorders, both for GPs and experts. Overall, the reported accuracy ranges from 59.3 to 89.8% for GPs and from 74.3 to 92.1% for experts. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Mining Stable Roles in RBAC

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Colantonio, Alessandro; di Pietro, Roberto; Ocello, Alberto; Verde, Nino Vincenzo

In this paper we address the problem of generating a candidate role-set for an RBAC configuration that enjoys the following two key features: it minimizes the administration cost; and, it is a stable candidate role-set. To achieve these goals, we implement a three steps methodology: first, we associate a weight to roles; second, we identify and remove the user-permission assignments that cannot belong to a role that have a weight exceeding a given threshold; third, we restrict the problem of finding a candidate role-set for the given system configuration using only the user-permission assignments that have not been removed in the second step—that is, user-permission assignments that belong to roles with a weight exceeding the given threshold. We formally show—proof of our results are rooted in graph theory—that this methodology achieves the intended goals. Finally, we discuss practical applications of our approach to the role mining problem.

A Model for Oil-Gas Pipelines Cost Prediction Based on a Data Mining Process

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Batzias, Fragiskos A.; Spanidis, Phillip-Mark P.

2009-08-01

This paper addresses the problems associated with the cost estimation of oil/gas pipelines during the elaboration of feasibility assessments. Techno-economic parameters, i.e., cost, length and diameter, are critical for such studies at the preliminary design stage. A methodology for the development of a cost prediction model based on Data Mining (DM) process is proposed. The design and implementation of a Knowledge Base (KB), maintaining data collected from various disciplines of the pipeline industry, are presented. The formulation of a cost prediction equation is demonstrated by applying multiple regression analysis using data sets extracted from the KB. Following the methodology proposed, a learning context is inductively developed as background pipeline data are acquired, grouped and stored in the KB, and through a linear regression model provide statistically substantial results, useful for project managers or decision makers.

The potential of text mining in data integration and network biology for plant research: a case study on Arabidopsis.

PubMed

Van Landeghem, Sofie; De Bodt, Stefanie; Drebert, Zuzanna J; Inzé, Dirk; Van de Peer, Yves

2013-03-01

Despite the availability of various data repositories for plant research, a wealth of information currently remains hidden within the biomolecular literature. Text mining provides the necessary means to retrieve these data through automated processing of texts. However, only recently has advanced text mining methodology been implemented with sufficient computational power to process texts at a large scale. In this study, we assess the potential of large-scale text mining for plant biology research in general and for network biology in particular using a state-of-the-art text mining system applied to all PubMed abstracts and PubMed Central full texts. We present extensive evaluation of the textual data for Arabidopsis thaliana, assessing the overall accuracy of this new resource for usage in plant network analyses. Furthermore, we combine text mining information with both protein-protein and regulatory interactions from experimental databases. Clusters of tightly connected genes are delineated from the resulting network, illustrating how such an integrative approach is essential to grasp the current knowledge available for Arabidopsis and to uncover gene information through guilt by association. All large-scale data sets, as well as the manually curated textual data, are made publicly available, hereby stimulating the application of text mining data in future plant biology studies.

Relationships between sources of acid mine drainage and the hydrochemistry of acid effluents during rainy season in the Iberian Pyrite Belt.

PubMed

Pérez-Ostalé, E; Grande, J A; Valente, T; de la Torre, M L; Santisteban, M; Fernández, P; Diaz-Curiel, J

2016-01-01

In the Iberian Pyrite Belt (IPB), southwest Spain, a prolonged and intense mining activity of more than 4,500 years has resulted in almost a hundred mines scattered through the region. After years of inactivity, these mines are still causing high levels of hydrochemical degradation in the fluvial network. This situation represents a unique scenario in the world, taking into consideration its magnitude and intensity of the contamination processes. In order to obtain a benchmark regarding the degree of acid mine drainage (AMD) pollution in the aquatic environment, the relationship between the areas occupied by the sulfide mines and the characteristics of the respective effluents after rainfall was analysed. The methodology developed, which includes the design of a sampling network, analytical treatment and cluster analysis, is a useful tool for diagnosing the contamination level by AMD in an entire metallogenic province, at the scale of each mining group. The results presented the relationship between sulfate, total dissolved solids and electrical conductivity, as well as other parameters that are typically associated with AMD and the major elements that compose the polymetallic sulfides of IPB. This analysis also indicates the low level of proximity between the affectation area and the other variables.

Medical data mining: knowledge discovery in a clinical data warehouse.

PubMed Central

Prather, J. C.; Lobach, D. F.; Goodwin, L. K.; Hales, J. W.; Hage, M. L.; Hammond, W. E.

1997-01-01

Clinical databases have accumulated large quantities of information about patients and their medical conditions. Relationships and patterns within this data could provide new medical knowledge. Unfortunately, few methodologies have been developed and applied to discover this hidden knowledge. In this study, the techniques of data mining (also known as Knowledge Discovery in Databases) were used to search for relationships in a large clinical database. Specifically, data accumulated on 3,902 obstetrical patients were evaluated for factors potentially contributing to preterm birth using exploratory factor analysis. Three factors were identified by the investigators for further exploration. This paper describes the processes involved in mining a clinical database including data warehousing, data query and cleaning, and data analysis. PMID:9357597

A systems biology approach to the global analysis of transcription factors in colorectal cancer.

PubMed

Pradhan, Meeta P; Prasad, Nagendra K A; Palakal, Mathew J

2012-08-01

Biological entities do not perform in isolation, and often, it is the nature and degree of interactions among numerous biological entities which ultimately determines any final outcome. Hence, experimental data on any single biological entity can be of limited value when considered only in isolation. To address this, we propose that augmenting individual entity data with the literature will not only better define the entity's own significance but also uncover relationships with novel biological entities.To test this notion, we developed a comprehensive text mining and computational methodology that focused on discovering new targets of one class of molecular entities, transcription factors (TF), within one particular disease, colorectal cancer (CRC). We used 39 molecular entities known to be associated with CRC along with six colorectal cancer terms as the bait list, or list of search terms, for mining the biomedical literature to identify CRC-specific genes and proteins. Using the literature-mined data, we constructed a global TF interaction network for CRC. We then developed a multi-level, multi-parametric methodology to identify TFs to CRC. The small bait list, when augmented with literature-mined data, identified a large number of biological entities associated with CRC. The relative importance of these TF and their associated modules was identified using functional and topological features. Additional validation of these highly-ranked TF using the literature strengthened our findings. Some of the novel TF that we identified were: SLUG, RUNX1, IRF1, HIF1A, ATF-2, ABL1, ELK-1 and GATA-1. Some of these TFs are associated with functional modules in known pathways of CRC, including the Beta-catenin/development, immune response, transcription, and DNA damage pathways. Our methodology of using text mining data and a multi-level, multi-parameter scoring technique was able to identify both known and novel TF that have roles in CRC. Starting with just one TF (SMAD3) in the bait list, the literature mining process identified an additional 116 CRC-associated TFs. Our network-based analysis showed that these TFs all belonged to any of 13 major functional groups that are known to play important roles in CRC. Among these identified TFs, we obtained a novel six-node module consisting of ATF2-P53-JNK1-ELK1-EPHB2-HIF1A, from which the novel JNK1-ELK1 association could potentially be a significant marker for CRC.

Data mining of text as a tool in authorship attribution

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Visa, Ari J. E.; Toivonen, Jarmo; Autio, Sami; Maekinen, Jarno; Back, Barbro; Vanharanta, Hannu

2001-03-01

It is common that text documents are characterized and classified by keywords that the authors use to give them. Visa et al. have developed a new methodology based on prototype matching. The prototype is an interesting document or a part of an extracted, interesting text. This prototype is matched with the document database of the monitored document flow. The new methodology is capable of extracting the meaning of the document in a certain degree. Our claim is that the new methodology is also capable of authenticating the authorship. To verify this claim two tests were designed. The test hypothesis was that the words and the word order in the sentences could authenticate the author. In the first test three authors were selected. The selected authors were William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, and George Bernard Shaw. Three texts from each author were examined. Every text was one by one used as a prototype. The two nearest matches with the prototype were noted. The second test uses the Reuters-21578 financial news database. A group of 25 short financial news reports from five different authors are examined. Our new methodology and the interesting results from the two tests are reported in this paper. In the first test, for Shakespeare and for Poe all cases were successful. For Shaw one text was confused with Poe. In the second test the Reuters-21578 financial news were identified by the author relatively well. The resolution is that our text mining methodology seems to be capable of authorship attribution.

Hearing Children's Voices through a Conversation Analysis Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bateman, Amanda

2017-01-01

This article introduces the methodological approach of conversation analysis (CA) and demonstrates its usefulness in presenting more authentic documentation and analysis of children's voices. Grounded in ethnomethodology, CA has recently gained interest in the area of early childhood studies due to the affordances it holds for gaining access to…

Conversation Analysis in Computer-Assisted Language Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

González-Lloret, Marta

2015-01-01

The use of Conversation Analysis (CA) in the study of technology-mediated interactions is a recent methodological addition to qualitative research in the field of Computer-assisted Language Learning (CALL). The expansion of CA in Second Language Acquisition research, coupled with the need for qualitative techniques to explore how people interact…

Evaluating a Tacit Knowledge Sharing Initiative: A Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gubbins, Claire; Corrigan, Siobhan; Garavan, Thomas N.; O'Connor, Christy; Leahy, Damien; Long, David; Murphy, Eamonn

2012-01-01

Purpose: This paper aims to present a case study illustrating the issues involved in the tacit knowledge conversion process and to determine whether such conversion delivers value to the organisation in terms of business value and return on investment (ROI). Design/methodology/approach: A single-case multiple baseline participants experimental…

Oral Conversations Online: Redefining Oral Competence in Synchronous Environments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lamy, Marie-Noelle

2004-01-01

In this article the focus is on methodology for analysing learner-learner oral conversations mediated by computers. With the increasing availability of synchronous voice-based groupware and the additional facilities offered by audio-graphic tools, language learners have opportunities for collaborating on oral tasks, supported by visual and textual…

Cooperative Catalog Conversion Study. Final Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Co., Washington, DC.

Cost estimates provided by cataloging vendors during January 1981 are analyzed to identify the costs of catalog conversion options and alternatives to the card catalog for six Minnesota regional library systems. Following an executive summary of the study is a discussion of its background, scope, objectives, data gathering methodology, and…

The co-definition of self: conversations in virtual reality.

PubMed

Cantamesse, Matteo

2009-01-01

Conversation analysis can take the form of a qualitative methodology for the exploration of discursive productions, whose main goal is the formulation of hypotheses for reading psychosocial interaction through descriptive models of interlocution. Therefore, in this study, conversations in a shared Virtual Environment have been analyzed in order to understand the specific structure, dynamics, and phenomenology of Virtual Reality effects on the "interactive micro-chains" that constitute the communicative thread of daily experience.

Scalar Implicatures in Child Language: Give Children a Chance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Foppolo, Francesca; Guasti, Maria Teresa; Chierchia, Gennaro

2012-01-01

Children's pragmatic competence in deriving conversational implicatures (and scalar implicatures in particular) offers an intriguing standpoint to explore how developmental, methodological, and purely theoretical perspectives interact and feed each other. In this paper, we focus mainly on developmental and methodological issues, showing that…

Modeling Single-Event Transient Propagation in a SiGe BiCMOS Direct-Conversion Receiver

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ildefonso, Adrian; Song, Ickhyun; Tzintzarov, George N.; Fleetwood, Zachary E.; Lourenco, Nelson E.; Wachter, Mason T.; Cressler, John D.

2017-08-01

The propagation of single-event transient (SET) signals in a silicon-germanium direct-conversion receiver carrying modulated data is explored. A theoretical analysis of transient propagation, verified by simulation, is presented. A new methodology to characterize and quantify the impact of SETs in communication systems carrying modulated data is proposed. The proposed methodology uses a pulsed radiation source to induce distortions in the signal constellation. The error vector magnitude due to SETs can then be calculated to quantify errors. Two different modulation schemes were simulated: QPSK and 16-QAM. The distortions in the constellation diagram agree with the presented circuit theory. Furthermore, the proposed methodology was applied to evaluate the improvements in the SET response due to a known radiation-hardening-by-design (RHBD) technique, where the common-base device of the low-noise amplifier was operated in inverse mode. The proposed methodology can be a valid technique to determine the most sensitive parts of a system carrying modulated data.

An industrial ecology approach to municipal solid waste ...

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Municipal solid waste (MSW) can be viewed as a feedstock for industrial ecology inspired conversions of wastes to valuable products and energy. The industrial ecology principle of symbiotic processes using waste streams for creating value-added products is applied to MSW, with examples suggested for various residual streams. A methodology is presented to consider individual waste-to-energy or waste-to-product system synergies, evaluating the economic and environmental issues associated with each system. Steps included in the methodology include identifying waste streams, specific waste components of interest, and conversion technologies, plus steps for determining the economic and environmental effects of using wastes and changes due to transport, administrative handling, and processing. In addition to presenting the methodology, technologies for various MSW input streams are categorized as commercialized or demonstrated to provide organizations that are considering processes for MSW with summarized information. The organization can also follow the methodology to analyze interesting processes. Presents information useful for analyzing the sustainability of alternatives for the management of municipal solid waste.

Astroinformatics, data mining and the future of astronomical research

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brescia, Massimo; Longo, Giuseppe

2013-08-01

Astronomy, as many other scientific disciplines, is facing a true data deluge which is bound to change both the praxis and the methodology of every day research work. The emerging field of astroinformatics, while on the one end appears crucial to face the technological challenges, on the other is opening new exciting perspectives for new astronomical discoveries through the implementation of advanced data mining procedures. The complexity of astronomical data and the variety of scientific problems, however, call for innovative algorithms and methods as well as for an extreme usage of ICT technologies.

Lunar resource recovery: A definition of requirements

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Elsworth, D.; Kohler, J. L.; Alexander, S. S.

1992-01-01

The capability to locate, mine, and process the natural resources of the Moon will be an essential requirement for lunar base development and operation. The list of materials that will be necessary is extensive and ranges from oxygen and hydrogen for fuel and life support to process tailings for emplacement over habitats. Despite the resources need, little is known about methodologies that might be suitable for utilizing lunar resources. This paper examines some of the requirements and constraints for resource recovery and identifies key areas of research needed to locate, mine, and process extraterrestrial natural resources.

Forecast of long term coal supply and mining conditions: Model documentation and results

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1980-01-01

A coal industry model was developed to support the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in its investigation of advanced underground coal extraction systems. The model documentation includes the programming for the coal mining cost models and an accompanying users' manual, and a guide to reading model output. The methodology used in assembling the transportation, demand, and coal reserve components of the model are also described. Results presented for 1986 and 2000, include projections of coal production patterns and marginal prices, differentiated by coal sulfur content.

3D modeling of underground objects with the use of SLAM technology on the example of historical mine in Ciechanowice (Ołowiane Range, The Sudetes)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wajs, Jaroslaw; Kasza, Damian; Zagożdżon, Paweł P.; Zagożdżon, Katarzyna D.

2018-01-01

Terrestrial Laser Scanning is a currently one of the most popular methods for producing representations of 3D objects. This paper presents the potential of applying the mobile laser scanning method to inventory underground objects. The examined location was a historic crystalline limestone mine situated in the vicinity of Ciechanowice village (Kaczawa Mts., SW Poland). The authors present a methodology for performing measurements and for processing the obtained results, whose accuracy is additionally verified.

A review of EO image information mining

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Quartulli, Marco; Olaizola, Igor G.

2013-01-01

We analyze the state of the art of content-based retrieval in Earth observation image archives focusing on complete systems showing promise for operational implementation. The different paradigms at the basis of the main system families are introduced. The approaches taken are considered, focusing in particular on the phases after primitive feature extraction. The solutions envisaged for the issues related to feature simplification and synthesis, indexing, semantic labeling are reviewed. The methodologies for query specification and execution are evaluated. Conclusions are drawn on the state of published research in Earth observation (EO) mining.

Traditional knowledge for sustainable forest management and provision of ecosystem services

Treesearch

John Parrotta; Yeo-Chang Youn; Leni D. Camacho

2016-01-01

Forests, and the people who depend on them, are under enormous pressure worldwide. Deforestation in many parts of the world continues at an alarming pace, the result of agricultural conversion for food and industrial crops such as oil palm, livestock production, mining, and energy and industrial infrastructure development. Forest degradation is even more widespread,...

The 4M companY: Make Mine Metric Mission! Sixth Grade Teacher's Guide.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hawaii State Dept. of Education, Honolulu.

This is one of several teacher's guides for the 4M Company, a set of materials for teaching metric concepts and computation skills to elementary school students. Included in the guide are sections on needed materials, metric symbols, length, perimeter, area, volume, capacity, mass (weight), decimals, conversion between metric units, temperature,…

Back analysis of fault-slip in burst prone environment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sainoki, Atsushi; Mitri, Hani S.

2016-11-01

In deep underground mines, stress re-distribution induced by mining activities could cause fault-slip. Seismic waves arising from fault-slip occasionally induce rock ejection when hitting the boundary of mine openings, and as a result, severe damage could be inflicted. In general, it is difficult to estimate fault-slip-induced ground motion in the vicinity of mine openings because of the complexity of the dynamic response of faults and the presence of geological structures. In this paper, a case study is conducted for a Canadian underground mine, herein called "Mine-A", which is known for its seismic activities. Using a microseismic database collected from the mine, a back analysis of fault-slip is carried out with mine-wide 3-dimensional numerical modeling. A back analysis is conducted to estimate the physical and mechanical properties of the causative fracture or shear zones. One large seismic event has been selected for the back analysis to detect a fault-slip related seismic event. In the back analysis, the shear zone properties are estimated with respect to moment magnitude of the seismic event and peak particle velocity (PPV) recorded by a strong ground motion sensor. The estimated properties are then validated through comparison with peak ground acceleration recorded by accelerometers. Lastly, ground motion in active mining areas is estimated by conducting dynamic analysis with the estimated values. The present study implies that it would be possible to estimate the magnitude of seismic events that might occur in the near future by applying the estimated properties to the numerical model. Although the case study is conducted for a specific mine, the developed methodology can be equally applied to other mines suffering from fault-slip related seismic events.

BioCreative Workshops for DOE Genome Sciences: Text Mining for Metagenomics

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Wu, Cathy H.; Hirschman, Lynette

The objective of this project was to host BioCreative workshops to define and develop text mining tasks to meet the needs of the Genome Sciences community, focusing on metadata information extraction in metagenomics. Following the successful introduction of metagenomics at the BioCreative IV workshop, members of the metagenomics community and BioCreative communities continued discussion to identify candidate topics for a BioCreative metagenomics track for BioCreative V. Of particular interest was the capture of environmental and isolation source information from text. The outcome was to form a “community of interest” around work on the interactive EXTRACT system, which supported interactive taggingmore » of environmental and species data. This experiment is included in the BioCreative V virtual issue of Database. In addition, there was broad participation by members of the metagenomics community in the panels held at BioCreative V, leading to valuable exchanges between the text mining developers and members of the metagenomics research community. These exchanges are reflected in a number of the overview and perspective pieces also being captured in the BioCreative V virtual issue. Overall, this conversation has exposed the metagenomics researchers to the possibilities of text mining, and educated the text mining developers to the specific needs of the metagenomics community.« less

Factors Affecting Elevated Arsenic and Methyl Mercury Concentrations in Small Shield Lakes Surrounding Gold Mines near the Yellowknife, NT, (Canada) Region

PubMed Central

Houben, Adam James; D’Onofrio, Rebecca; Kokelj, Steven V; Blais, Jules M

2016-01-01

Gold mines in the Yellowknife, NT, region—in particular, the Giant Mine—operated from 1949–99, releasing 237,000 tonnes of waste arsenic trioxide (As2O3) dust, among other compounds, from gold ore extraction and roasting processes. For the first time, we show the geospatial distribution of roaster-derived emissions of several chemical species beyond the mine property on otherwise undisturbed taiga shield lakes within a 25 km radius of the mine, 11 years after its closing. Additionally, we demonstrate that underlying bedrock is not a significant source for the elevated concentrations in overlying surface waters. Aquatic arsenic (As) concentrations are well above guidelines for drinking water (10 μg/L) and protection for aquatic life (5 μg/L), ranging up to 136 μg/L in lakes within 4 km from the mine, to 2.0 μg/L in lakes 24 km away. High conversion ratios of methyl mercury were shown in lakes near the roaster stack as well, with MeHg concentrations reaching 44% of total mercury. The risk of elevated exposures by these metals is significant, as many lakes used for recreation and fishing near the City of Yellowknife are within this radius of elevated As and methyl Hg concentrations. PMID:27050658

A Single Conversation with a Wise Man Is Better than Ten Years of Study: A Model for Testing Methodologies for Pedagogy or Andragogy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Taylor, Bryan; Kroth, Michael

2009-01-01

This article creates the Teaching Methodology Instrument (TMI) to help determine the level of adult learning principles being used by a particular teaching methodology in a classroom. The instrument incorporates the principles and assumptions set forth by Malcolm Knowles of what makes a good adult learning environment. The Socratic method as used…

Utilization of coal mine methane for methanol and SCP production. Topical report, May 5, 1995--March 4, 1996

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

NONE

1998-12-31

The feasibility of utilizing a biological process to reduce methane emissions from coal mines and to produce valuable single cell protein (SCP) and/or methanol as a product has been demonstrated. The quantities of coal mine methane from vent gas, gob wells, premining wells and abandoned mines have been determined in order to define the potential for utilizing mine gases as a resource. It is estimated that 300 MMCFD of methane is produced in the United States at a typical concentration of 0.2-0.6 percent in ventilation air. Of this total, almost 20 percent is produced from the four Jim Walter Resourcesmore » (JWR) mines, which are located in very gassy coal seams. Worldwide vent gas production is estimated at 1 BCFD. Gob gas methane production in the U.S. is estimated to be 38 MMCFD. Very little gob gas is produced outside the U.S. In addition, it is estimated that abandoned mines may generate as much as 90 MMCFD of methane. In order to make a significant impact on coal mine methane emissions, technology which is able to utilize dilute vent gases as a resource must be developed. Purification of the methane from the vent gases would be very expensive and impractical. Therefore, the process application must be able to use a dilute methane stream. Biological conversion of this dilute methane (as well as the more concentrated gob gases) to produce single cell protein (SCP) and/or methanol has been demonstrated in the Bioengineering Resources, Inc. (BRI) laboratories. SCP is used as an animal feed supplement, which commands a high price, about $0.11 per pound.« less

Advanced liquefaction using coal swelling and catalyst dispersion techniques. Volume 2, appendices. Final technical report, October 1, 1991--September 30, 1994

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Curtis, C.W.; Chander, S.; Gutterman, C.

Liquefaction experiments were undertaken using subbituminous Black Thunder mine coal to observe the effects of aqueous SO{sub 2} coal beneficiation and the introduction of various coal swelling solvents and catalyst precursors. Aqueous SO{sub 2} beneficiation of Black Thunder coal removed alkali metals and alkaline earth metals, increased the sulfur content and increased the catalytic liquefaction conversion to THF solubles compared to untreated Black Thunder coal. The liquefaction solvent had varying effects on coal conversion, depending upon the type of solvent added. The hydrogen donor solvent, dihydroanthracene, was most effective, while a coal-derived Wilsonville solvent promoted more coal conversion than didmore » relatively inert 1-methylnaphthalene. Swelling of coal with hydrogen bonding solvents tetrahydrofuran (THF), isopropanol, and methanol, prior to reaction resulted in increased noncatalytic conversion of both untreated and SO{sub 2} treated Black Thunder coals, while dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO), which was absorbed more into the coal than any other swelling solvent, was detrimental to coal conversion. Swelling of SO{sub 2} treated coal before liquefaction resulted in the highest coal conversions; however, the untreated coal showed the most improvements in catalytic reactions when swelled in either THF, isopropanol, or methanol prior to liquefaction. The aprotic solvent DMSO was detrimental to coal conversion.« less

Effects of overweight vehicles on New York State DOT infrastructure.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2015-09-01

This report develops a methodology for estimating the effects of different categories of overweight : trucks on NYSDOT pavements and bridges. A data mining algorithm is used to categorize truck : data collected at several Weigh-In-Motion stations aro...

Sub-Ocean Drilling

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1981-01-01

The National Science Foundation (NSF) initialized a new phase of exploration last year, a 10 year effort jointly funded by NSF and several major oil companies, known as the Ocean Margin Drilling Program (OMDP). The OMDP requires a ship with capabilities beyond existing drill ships; it must drill in 13,000 feet of water to a depth 20,000 feet below the ocean floor. To meet requirements, NSF is considering the conversion of the government-owned mining ship Glomar Explorer to a deep ocean drilling and coring vessel. Feasibility study performed by Donhaiser Marine, Inc. analyzed the ship's characteristics for suitability and evaluated conversion requirement. DMI utilized COSMIC's Ship Motion and Sea Load Computer program to perform analysis which could not be accomplished by other means. If approved for conversion, Glomar Explorer is expected to begin operations as a drillship in 1984.

A Neural-Network Clustering-Based Algorithm for Privacy Preserving Data Mining

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tsiafoulis, S.; Zorkadis, V. C.; Karras, D. A.

The increasing use of fast and efficient data mining algorithms in huge collections of personal data, facilitated through the exponential growth of technology, in particular in the field of electronic data storage media and processing power, has raised serious ethical, philosophical and legal issues related to privacy protection. To cope with these concerns, several privacy preserving methodologies have been proposed, classified in two categories, methodologies that aim at protecting the sensitive data and those that aim at protecting the mining results. In our work, we focus on sensitive data protection and compare existing techniques according to their anonymity degree achieved, the information loss suffered and their performance characteristics. The ℓ-diversity principle is combined with k-anonymity concepts, so that background information can not be exploited to successfully attack the privacy of data subjects data refer to. Based on Kohonen Self Organizing Feature Maps (SOMs), we firstly organize data sets in subspaces according to their information theoretical distance to each other, then create the most relevant classes paying special attention to rare sensitive attribute values, and finally generalize attribute values to the minimum extend required so that both the data disclosure probability and the information loss are possibly kept negligible. Furthermore, we propose information theoretical measures for assessing the anonymity degree achieved and empirical tests to demonstrate it.

Auditing SNOMED Relationships Using a Converse Abstraction Network

PubMed Central

Wei, Duo; Halper, Michael; Elhanan, Gai; Chen, Yan; Perl, Yehoshua; Geller, James; Spackman, Kent A.

2009-01-01

In SNOMED CT, a given kind of attribute relationship is defined between two hierarchies, a source and a target. Certain hierarchies (or subhierarchies) serve only as targets, with no outgoing relationships of their own. However, converse relationships—those pointing in a direction opposite to the defined relationships—while not explicitly represented in SNOMED’s inferred view, can be utilized in forming an alternative view of a source. In particular, they can help shed light on a source hierarchy’s overall relationship structure. Toward this end, an abstraction network, called the converse abstraction network (CAN), derived automatically from a given SNOMED hierarchy is presented. An auditing methodology based on the CAN is formulated. The methodology is applied to SNOMED’s Device subhierarchy and the related device relationships of the Procedure hierarchy. The results indicate that the CAN is useful in finding opportunities for refining and improving SNOMED. PMID:20351941

Repair Sequences in Dysarthric Conversational Speech: A Study in Interactional Phonetics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rutter, Ben

2009-01-01

This paper presents some findings from a case study of repair sequences in conversations between a dysarthric speaker, Chris, and her interactional partners. It adopts the methodology of interactional phonetics, where turn design, sequence organization, and variation in phonetic parameters are analysed in unison. The analysis focused on the use of…

The Impact of Knowledge Conversion Processes on Implementing a Learning Organization Strategy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Al-adaileh, Raid Moh'd; Dahou, Khadra; Hacini, Ishaq

2012-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to explore the influence of the knowledge conversion processes (KCP) on the success of a learning organization (LO) strategy implementation. Design/methodology/approach: Using a case study approach, the research model examines the impact of the KCP including socialization, externalization, combination and…

The Journey of Organizational Unlearning: A Conversation with William H. Starbuck

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nguyen, Nhien

2017-01-01

Purpose: This paper aims to provide an overview of the concept "organizational unlearning" and its development since it was first introduced to the management literature and presents a useful perspective that can help to advance the conceptual development of this topic. Design/methodology/approach: Through a conversation with celebrated…

Changing over a Project Changing over: A Project-Research Supervision as a Conversation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Clarke, Helen; Ryan, Charly

2006-01-01

Extracts from the written conversation between research student and supervisor show the nature of educative research supervision. The authors argue that researcher-supervisor relationships are methodological in nature as they shape and influence the people, the project and the field. Such relationships, which construct meanings, are complex. A…

Managing Problems of Acceptability through High Rise-Fall Repetitions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Benjamin, Trevor; Walker, Traci

2013-01-01

This article examines one of the ways in which matters of truth, appropriateness, and acceptability are raised and managed within the course of everyday conversation. Using the methodology of conversation analysis, we show that by repeating what another participant has said and doing so with a high rise-fall intonation contour, a speaker claims…

Facilitating Conversational Learning in a Project Team Practice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sense, Andrew J.

2005-01-01

Purpose: This paper seeks to provide an empirical insight into the facilitation dilemmas for conversational learning in a project team environment. Design/methodology/approach: This paper is an outcome of a participative action research process into the dynamics of situated learning activity in a case study project team. As part of their…

USGS compilation of geographic information system (GIS) data of coal mines and coal-bearing areas in Mongolia

USGS Publications Warehouse

Trippi, Michael H.; Belkin, Harvey E.

2015-09-10

Geographic information system (GIS) information may facilitate energy studies, which in turn provide input for energy policy decisions. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has compiled GIS data representing coal mines, deposits (including those with and without coal mines), occurrences, areas, basins, and provinces of Mongolia as of 2009. These data are now available for download, and may be used in a GIS for a variety of energy resource and environmental studies of Mongolia. Chemical data for 37 coal samples from a previous USGS study of Mongolia (Tewalt and others, 2010) are included in a downloadable GIS point shapefile and shown on the map of Mongolia. A brief report summarizes the methodology used for creation of the shapefiles and the chemical analyses run on the samples.

Biomedical hypothesis generation by text mining and gene prioritization.

PubMed

Petric, Ingrid; Ligeti, Balazs; Gyorffy, Balazs; Pongor, Sandor

2014-01-01

Text mining methods can facilitate the generation of biomedical hypotheses by suggesting novel associations between diseases and genes. Previously, we developed a rare-term model called RaJoLink (Petric et al, J. Biomed. Inform. 42(2): 219-227, 2009) in which hypotheses are formulated on the basis of terms rarely associated with a target domain. Since many current medical hypotheses are formulated in terms of molecular entities and molecular mechanisms, here we extend the methodology to proteins and genes, using a standardized vocabulary as well as a gene/protein network model. The proposed enhanced RaJoLink rare-term model combines text mining and gene prioritization approaches. Its utility is illustrated by finding known as well as potential gene-disease associations in ovarian cancer using MEDLINE abstracts and the STRING database.

Agile Text Mining for the 2014 i2b2/UTHealth Cardiac Risk Factors Challenge

PubMed Central

Cormack, James; Nath, Chinmoy; Milward, David; Raja, Kalpana; Jonnalagadda, Siddhartha R

2016-01-01

This paper describes the use of an agile text mining platform (Linguamatics’ Interactive Information Extraction Platform, I2E) to extract document-level cardiac risk factors in patient records as defined in the i2b2/UTHealth 2014 Challenge. The approach uses a data-driven rule-based methodology with the addition of a simple supervised classifier. We demonstrate that agile text mining allows for rapid optimization of extraction strategies, while post-processing can leverage annotation guidelines, corpus statistics and logic inferred from the gold standard data. We also show how data imbalance in a training set affects performance. Evaluation of this approach on the test data gave an F-Score of 91.7%, one percent behind the top performing system. PMID:26209007

Tridimensional modelling and resource estimation of the mining waste piles of São Domingos mine, Iberian Pyrite Belt, Portugal

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vieira, Alexandre; Matos, João; Lopes, Luis; Martins, Ruben

2016-04-01

Located in the Iberian Pyrite Belt (IPB) northern sector, near the Portuguese/Spanish border, the outcropping São Domingos deposit was mined since Roman time. Between 1854 and 1966 the Mason & Barry Company developed open pit excavation until 120 m depth and underground mining until 420 m depth. The São Domingos subvertical deposit is associated with felsic volcanics and black shales of the IPB Volcano-Sedimentary Complex and is represented by massive sulphide and stockwork ore (py, cpy, sph, ga, tt, aspy) and related supergene enrichment ore (hematite gossan and covellite/chalcocite). Different mine waste classes were mapped around the old open pit: gossan (W1), felsic volcanic and shales (W2), shales (W3) and mining waste landfill (W4). Using the LNEG (Portuguese Geological Survey) CONASA database (company historical mining waste characterization based on 162 shafts and 160 reverse circulation boreholes), a methodology for tridimensional modelling mining waste pile was followed, and a new mining waste resource is presented. Considering some constraints to waste removal, such as the Mina de São Domingos village proximity of the wastes, the industrial and archaeological patrimony (e.g., mining infrastructures, roman galleries), different resource scenarios were considered: unconditioned resources (total estimates) and conditioned resources (only the volumes without removal constraints considered). Using block modelling (SURPAC software) a mineral inferred resource of 2.38 Mt @ 0.77 g/t Au and 8.26 g/t Ag is estimated in unconditioned volumes of waste. Considering all evaluated wastes, including village areas, an inferred resource of 4.0 Mt @ 0.64 g/t Au and 7.30 g/t Ag is presented, corresponding to a total metal content of 82,878 oz t Au and 955,753 oz t Ag. Keywords. São Domingos mine, mining waste resources, mining waste pile modelling, Iberian Pyrite Belt, Portugal

Removal of copper in leachate from mining residues using electrochemical technology.

PubMed

Lambert, Andréa; Drogui, Patrick; Daghrir, Rimeh; Zaviska, François; Benzaazoua, Mostafa

2014-01-15

This research is related to a laboratory study on the performance of a successive mining residues leaching and electrochemical copper recovery process. To clearly define the experimental region for response surface methodology (RSM), a preliminary study was performed by applying a current intensity varying from 0.5 A to 4.0 A for 60 min. By decreasing the current intensity from 4.0 A to 0.5 A, a good adhesion and a very smooth and continuous interface of copper was formed and deposited on the cathode electrode. However, the removal rate of Cu decreased from 83.7% to 37.9% when the current intensity passed from 4.0 A to 0.5 A, respectively. Subsequently, the factorial design and central composite design methodologies were successively employed to define the optimal operating conditions for copper removal in the mining residues leachate. Using a 2(3) factorial matrix, the best performance for copper removal (97.7%) was obtained at a current intensity of 2.0 A during 100 min. The current intensity and electrolysis time were found to be the most influent parameters. The contribution of current intensity and electrolysis time was around 65.8% and 33.9%, respectively. The treatment using copper electrode and current intensity of 1.3 A during 80 min was found to be the optimal conditions in terms of cost/effectiveness. Under these conditions, 86% of copper can be recovered for a total cost of 0.56 $ per cubic meter of treated mining residues leachate. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Quantifying the link between crop production and mined groundwater irrigation in China.

PubMed

Grogan, Danielle S; Zhang, Fan; Prusevich, Alexander; Lammers, Richard B; Wisser, Dominik; Glidden, Stanley; Li, Changsheng; Frolking, Steve

2015-04-01

In response to increasing demand for food, Chinese agriculture has both expanded and intensified over the past several decades. Irrigation has played a key role in increasing crop production, and groundwater is now an important source of irrigation water. Groundwater abstraction in excess of recharge (which we use here to estimate groundwater mining) has resulted in declining groundwater levels and could eventually restrict groundwater availability. In this study we used a hydrological model, WBMplus, in conjunction with a process based crop growth model, DNDC, to evaluate Chinese agriculture's recent dependence upon mined groundwater, and to quantify mined groundwater-dependent crop production across a domain that includes variation in climate, crop choice, and management practices. This methodology allowed for the direct attribution of crop production to irrigation water from rivers and reservoirs, shallow (renewable) groundwater, and mined groundwater. Simulating 20 years of weather variability and circa year 2000 crop areas, we found that mined groundwater fulfilled 20%-49% of gross irrigation water demand, assuming all demand was met. Mined groundwater accounted for 15%-27% of national total crop production. There was high spatial variability across China in irrigation water demand and crop production derived from mined groundwater. We find that climate variability and mined groundwater demand do not operate independently; rather, years in which irrigation water demand is high due to the relatively hot and dry climate also experience limited surface water supplies and therefore have less surface water with which to meet that high irrigation water demand. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Identifying barriers to patient acceptance of active surveillance: content analysis of online patient communications.

PubMed

Mishra, Mark V; Bennett, Michele; Vincent, Armon; Lee, Olivia T; Lallas, Costas D; Trabulsi, Edouard J; Gomella, Leonard G; Dicker, Adam P; Showalter, Timothy N

2013-01-01

Qualitative research aimed at identifying patient acceptance of active surveillance (AS) has been identified as a public health research priority. The primary objective of this study was to determine if analysis of a large-sample of anonymous internet conversations (ICs) could be utilized to identify unmet public needs regarding AS. English-language ICs regarding prostate cancer (PC) treatment with AS from 2002-12 were identified using a novel internet search methodology. Web spiders were developed to mine, aggregate, and analyze content from the world-wide-web for ICs centered on AS. Collection of ICs was not restricted to any specific geographic region of origin. NLP was used to evaluate content and perform a sentiment analysis. Conversations were scored as positive, negative, or neutral. A sentiment index (SI) was subsequently calculated according to the following formula to compare temporal trends in public sentiment towards AS: [(# Positive IC/#Total IC)-(#Negative IC/#Total IC) x 100]. A total of 464 ICs were identified. Sentiment increased from -13 to +2 over the study period. The increase sentiment has been driven by increased patient emphasis on quality-of-life factors and endorsement of AS by national medical organizations. Unmet needs identified in these ICs include: a gap between quantitative data regarding long-term outcomes with AS vs. conventional treatments, desire for treatment information from an unbiased specialist, and absence of public role models managed with AS. This study demonstrates the potential utility of online patient communications to provide insight into patient preferences and decision-making. Based on our findings, we recommend that multidisciplinary clinics consider including an unbiased specialist to present treatment options and that future decision tools for AS include quantitative data regarding outcomes after AS.

Data mining applications in the context of casemix.

PubMed

Koh, H C; Leong, S K

2001-07-01

In October 1999, the Singapore Government introduced casemix-based funding to public hospitals. The casemix approach to health care funding is expected to yield significant benefits, including equity and rationality in financing health care, the use of comparative casemix data for quality improvement activities, and the provision of information that enables hospitals to understand their cost behaviour and reinforces the drive for more cost-efficient services. However, there is some concern about the "quicker and sicker" syndrome (that is, the rapid discharge of patients with little regard for the quality of outcome). As it is likely that consequences of premature discharges will be reflected in the readmission data, an analysis of possible systematic patterns in readmission data can provide useful insight into the "quicker and sicker" syndrome. This paper explores potential data mining applications in the context of casemix by using readmission data as an illustration. In particular, it illustrates how data mining can be used to better understand readmission data and to detect systematic patterns, if any. From a technical perspective, data mining (which is capable of analysing complex non-linear and interaction relationships) supplements and complements traditional statistical methods in data analysis. From an applications perspective, data mining provides the technology and methodology to analyse mass volume of data to detect hidden patterns in data. Using readmission data as an illustrative data mining application, this paper explores potential data mining applications in the general casemix context.

The Potential of Text Mining in Data Integration and Network Biology for Plant Research: A Case Study on Arabidopsis[C][W

PubMed Central

Van Landeghem, Sofie; De Bodt, Stefanie; Drebert, Zuzanna J.; Inzé, Dirk; Van de Peer, Yves

2013-01-01

Despite the availability of various data repositories for plant research, a wealth of information currently remains hidden within the biomolecular literature. Text mining provides the necessary means to retrieve these data through automated processing of texts. However, only recently has advanced text mining methodology been implemented with sufficient computational power to process texts at a large scale. In this study, we assess the potential of large-scale text mining for plant biology research in general and for network biology in particular using a state-of-the-art text mining system applied to all PubMed abstracts and PubMed Central full texts. We present extensive evaluation of the textual data for Arabidopsis thaliana, assessing the overall accuracy of this new resource for usage in plant network analyses. Furthermore, we combine text mining information with both protein–protein and regulatory interactions from experimental databases. Clusters of tightly connected genes are delineated from the resulting network, illustrating how such an integrative approach is essential to grasp the current knowledge available for Arabidopsis and to uncover gene information through guilt by association. All large-scale data sets, as well as the manually curated textual data, are made publicly available, hereby stimulating the application of text mining data in future plant biology studies. PMID:23532071

Joint Test Protocol: Environmentally Friendly Zirconium Oxide Pretreatment Demonstration

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-12-01

coatings . Loss of paint adhesion is the primary failure mode on aluminum and steel. 3.7.3 Test Methodology The test methodology for pencil hardness...conversion pretreatment coatings . Loss of paint adhesion is the primary failure mode on aluminum and steel. 3.8.3 Test Methodology The test...SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES 14. ABSTRACT There is a need to implement innovative and cost- effective replacement technologies to address the multiple health, safety

A methodology for the environmental assessment of advanced coal extraction systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sullivan, P. J.; Hutchinson, C. F.; Makihara, J.; Evensizer, J.

1980-01-01

Procedures developed to identify and assess potential environment impacts of advanced mining technology as it moves from a generic concept to a more systems definition are described. Two levels of assessment are defined in terms of the design stage of the technology being evaluated. The first level of analysis is appropriate to a conceptual design. At this level it is assumed that each mining process has known and potential environmental impacts that are generic to each mining activity. By using this assumption, potential environmental impacts can be identified for new mining systems. When two or more systems have been assessed, they can be evaluated comparing potential environmental impacts. At the preliminary stage of design, a systems performance can be assessed again with more precision. At this level of systems definition, potential environmental impacts can be analyzed and their significane determined in a manner to facilitate comparisons between systems. At each level of analysis, suggestions calculated to help the designer mitigate potentially harmful impacts are provided.

Clinical diabetes research using data mining: a Canadian perspective.

PubMed

Shah, Baiju R; Lipscombe, Lorraine L

2015-06-01

With the advent of the digitization of large amounts of information and the computer power capable of analyzing this volume of information, data mining is increasingly being applied to medical research. Datasets created for administration of the healthcare system provide a wealth of information from different healthcare sectors, and Canadian provinces' single-payer universal healthcare systems mean that data are more comprehensive and complete in this country than in many other jurisdictions. The increasing ability to also link clinical information, such as electronic medical records, laboratory test results and disease registries, has broadened the types of data available for analysis. Data-mining methods have been used in many different areas of diabetes clinical research, including classic epidemiology, effectiveness research, population health and health services research. Although methodologic challenges and privacy concerns remain important barriers to using these techniques, data mining remains a powerful tool for clinical research. Copyright © 2015 Canadian Diabetes Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Mapping alteration minerals at prospect, outcrop and drill core scales using imaging spectrometry

PubMed Central

Kruse, Fred A.; L. Bedell, Richard; Taranik, James V.; Peppin, William A.; Weatherbee, Oliver; Calvin, Wendy M.

2011-01-01

Imaging spectrometer data (also known as ‘hyperspectral imagery’ or HSI) are well established for detailed mineral mapping from airborne and satellite systems. Overhead data, however, have substantial additional potential when used together with ground-based measurements. An imaging spectrometer system was used to acquire airborne measurements and to image in-place outcrops (mine walls) and boxed drill core and rock chips using modified sensor-mounting configurations. Data were acquired at 5 nm nominal spectral resolution in 360 channels from 0.4 to 2.45 μm. Analysis results using standardized hyperspectral methodologies demonstrate rapid extraction of representative mineral spectra and mapping of mineral distributions and abundances in map-plan, with core depth, and on the mine walls. The examples shown highlight the capabilities of these data for mineral mapping. Integration of these approaches promotes improved understanding of relations between geology, alteration and spectral signatures in three dimensions and should lead to improved efficiency of mine development, operations and ultimately effective mine closure. PMID:25937681

Progress in the Visualization and Mining of Chemical and Target Spaces.

PubMed

Medina-Franco, José L; Aguayo-Ortiz, Rodrigo

2013-12-01

Chemogenomics is a growing field that aims to integrate the chemical and target spaces. As part of a multi-disciplinary effort to achieve this goal, computational methods initially developed to visualize the chemical space of compound collections and mine single-target structure-activity relationships, are being adapted to visualize and mine complex relationships in chemogenomics data sets. Similarly, the growing evidence that clinical effects are many times due to the interaction of single or multiple drugs with multiple targets, is encouraging the development of novel methodologies that are integrated in multi-target drug discovery endeavors. Herein we review advances in the development and application of approaches to generate visual representations of chemical space with particular emphasis on methods that aim to explore and uncover relationships between chemical and target spaces. Also, progress in the data mining of the structure-activity relationships of sets of compounds screened across multiple targets are discussed in light of the concept of activity landscape modeling. Copyright © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

14 Conversations about Three Things

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wainer, Howard

2010-01-01

In this essay, the author tries to look forward into the 21st century to divine three things: (i) What skills will researchers in the future need to solve the most pressing problems? (ii) What are some of the most likely candidates to be those problems? and (iii) What are some current areas of research that seem mined out and should not distract…

Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics as a useful methodological framework for the Delphi technique.

PubMed

Guzys, Diana; Dickson-Swift, Virginia; Kenny, Amanda; Threlkeld, Guinever

2015-01-01

In this article we aim to demonstrate how Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics may provide a sound methodological framework for researchers using the Delphi Technique (Delphi) in studies exploring health and well-being. Reporting of the use of Delphi in health and well-being research is increasing, but less attention has been given to covering its methodological underpinnings. In Delphi, a structured anonymous conversation between participants is facilitated, via an iterative survey process. Participants are specifically selected for their knowledge and experience with the topic of interest. The purpose of structuring conversation in this manner is to cultivate collective opinion and highlight areas of disagreement, using a process that minimizes the influence of group dynamics. The underlying premise is that the opinion of a collective is more useful than that of an individual. In designing our study into health literacy, Delphi aligned well with our research focus and would enable us to capture collective views. However, we were interested in the methodology that would inform our study. As researchers, we believe that methodology provides the framework and principles for a study and is integral to research integrity. In assessing the suitability of Delphi for our research purpose, we found little information about underpinning methodology. The absence of a universally recognized or consistent methodology associated with Delphi was highlighted through a scoping review we undertook to assist us in our methodological thinking. This led us to consider alternative methodologies, which might be congruent with the key principles of Delphi. We identified Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics as a methodology that could provide a supportive framework and principles. We suggest that this methodology may be useful in health and well-being studies utilizing the Delphi method.

Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics as a useful methodological framework for the Delphi technique

PubMed Central

Guzys, Diana; Dickson-Swift, Virginia; Kenny, Amanda; Threlkeld, Guinever

2015-01-01

In this article we aim to demonstrate how Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics may provide a sound methodological framework for researchers using the Delphi Technique (Delphi) in studies exploring health and well-being. Reporting of the use of Delphi in health and well-being research is increasing, but less attention has been given to covering its methodological underpinnings. In Delphi, a structured anonymous conversation between participants is facilitated, via an iterative survey process. Participants are specifically selected for their knowledge and experience with the topic of interest. The purpose of structuring conversation in this manner is to cultivate collective opinion and highlight areas of disagreement, using a process that minimizes the influence of group dynamics. The underlying premise is that the opinion of a collective is more useful than that of an individual. In designing our study into health literacy, Delphi aligned well with our research focus and would enable us to capture collective views. However, we were interested in the methodology that would inform our study. As researchers, we believe that methodology provides the framework and principles for a study and is integral to research integrity. In assessing the suitability of Delphi for our research purpose, we found little information about underpinning methodology. The absence of a universally recognized or consistent methodology associated with Delphi was highlighted through a scoping review we undertook to assist us in our methodological thinking. This led us to consider alternative methodologies, which might be congruent with the key principles of Delphi. We identified Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics as a methodology that could provide a supportive framework and principles. We suggest that this methodology may be useful in health and well-being studies utilizing the Delphi method. PMID:25948132

Optimization of lipase-catalyzed synthesis of ginsenoside Rb1 esters using response surface methodology.

PubMed

Hu, Jiang-Ning; Lee, Jeung-Hee; Zhu, Xue-Mei; Shin, Jung-Ah; Adhikari, Prakash; Kim, Jae-Kyung; Lee, Ki-Teak

2008-11-26

In the lipase (Novozyme 435)-catalyzed synthesis of ginsenoside Rb1 esters, different acyl donors were found to affect not only the degree of conversion but also the regioselectivity. The reaction of acyl donors with short carbon chain was more effective, showing higher conversion than those with long carbon chain. Among the three solvent systems, the reaction in tert-amyl alcohol showed the highest conversion rate, while the reaction in the mixed solvent of t-BuOH and pyridine (1:1) had the lowest conversion rate. To allow the increase of GRb1 lipophilicity, we decided to further study the optimal condition of synthesis of GRb1 with vinyl decanoate with 10 carbon chain fatty acids in tert-amyl alcohol. Response surface methodology (RSM) was employed to optimize the synthesis condition. From the ridge analysis with maximum responses, the maximum GRb1 conversion was predicted to be 61.51% in a combination of factors (40.2 h, 52.95 degrees C, substrate mole ratio 275.57, and enzyme amount 39.81 mg/mL). Further, the adequacy of the predicted model was examined by additional independent experiments at the predicted maximum synthesis conditions. Results showed that the RSM was effective to optimize a combination of factors for lipase-catalyzed synthesis of ginsenoside Rb1 with vinyl decanoate.

Mathematical modeling of elementary trapping-reduction processes in positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy: methodology of Ps-to-positron trapping conversion

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shpotyuk, Ya; Cebulski, J.; Ingram, A.; Shpotyuk, O.

2017-12-01

Methodological possibilities of positron annihilation lifetime (PAL) spectroscopy in application to nanostructurized substances treated within three-term fitting procedure are reconsidered to parameterize their atomic-deficient structural arrangement. In contrast to conventional three-term fitting analysis of the detected PAL spectra based on admixed positron trapping and positronium (Ps) decaying, the nanostructurization due to guest nanoparticles embedded in host matrix is considered as producing modified trapping, which involves conversion between these channels. The developed approach referred to as x3-x2-coupling decomposition algorithm allows estimation free volumes of interfacial voids responsible for positron trapping and bulk lifetimes in nanoparticle-embedded substances. This methodology is validated using experimental data of Chakraverty et al. [Phys. Rev. B71 (2005) 024115] on PAL study of composites formed by guest NiFe2O4 nanocrystals grown in host SiO2 matrix.

A geostatistical approach to estimate mining efficiency indicators with flexible meshes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Freixas, Genis; Garriga, David; Fernàndez-Garcia, Daniel; Sanchez-Vila, Xavier

2014-05-01

Geostatistics is a branch of statistics developed originally to predict probability distributions of ore grades for mining operations by considering the attributes of a geological formation at unknown locations as a set of correlated random variables. Mining exploitations typically aim to maintain acceptable mineral laws to produce commercial products based upon demand. In this context, we present a new geostatistical methodology to estimate strategic efficiency maps that incorporate hydraulic test data, the evolution of concentrations with time obtained from chemical analysis (packer tests and production wells) as well as hydraulic head variations. The methodology is applied to a salt basin in South America. The exploitation is based on the extraction of brines through vertical and horizontal wells. Thereafter, brines are precipitated in evaporation ponds to obtain target potassium and magnesium salts of economic interest. Lithium carbonate is obtained as a byproduct of the production of potassium chloride. Aside from providing an assemble of traditional geostatistical methods, the strength of this study falls with the new methodology developed, which focus on finding the best sites to exploit the brines while maintaining efficiency criteria. Thus, some strategic indicator efficiency maps have been developed under the specific criteria imposed by exploitation standards to incorporate new extraction wells in new areas that would allow maintain or improve production. Results show that the uncertainty quantification of the efficiency plays a dominant role and that the use flexible meshes, which properly describe the curvilinear features associated with vertical stratification, provides a more consistent estimation of the geological processes. Moreover, we demonstrate that the vertical correlation structure at the given salt basin is essentially linked to variations in the formation thickness, which calls for flexible meshes and non-stationarity stochastic processes.

"A Hundred Times We Learned from One Another" Collaborative Learning in an Academic Writing Workshop

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dowse, Cilla; van Rensburg, Wilhelm

2015-01-01

Using Design Research as methodology and research design type, this article reports on a research proposal writing workshop conducted with Education postgraduate students, with the aim of ascertaining the roles that conversation, collaboration and feedback play in constructing meaning and supporting writing. It was found that through conversation,…

Rubrics and Reflection: A Discursive Analysis of Observation Debrief Conversations between Novice Teach for America Teachers and Mentors

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gabriel, Rachael

2017-01-01

Drawing upon discursive psychology as a theoretical and methodological framework, the author analyzes a set of five postobservation debrief conversations between novice teachers and their mentors. The author presents analysis and findings by highlighting how the interpretative repertoires of the rubric and protocol documents may be used to shape…

Practicalities of methodologies in monitoring morest degradation in the tropics

Treesearch

Yoshiyuki Kiyono

2013-01-01

Conversion of natural forest to agricultural land is one of the most important forms of land-use change affecting both carbon stock and biodiversity. When the agricultural land contains trees, e.g. fallow-land forest of slash-and-burn agriculture, the conversion can be categorized into forest degradation when the forest definition covers such vegetation. One practical...

Transcription Matters: Transcribing Talk and Interaction to Facilitate Conversation Analysis of the Taken-for-Granted in Young Children's Interactions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Davidson, Christina

2010-01-01

The development of transcripts is central to the work of many researchers yet questions of what and how researchers transcribe, and why, receive little attention in research literature. Conversation analysis is one research approach that has consistently addressed the integral relationship between theoretical and methodological perspectives,…

Alkaline hydrothermal conversion of fly ash filtrates into zeolites 2: utilization in wastewater treatment.

PubMed

Somerset, Vernon; Petrik, Leslie; Iwuoha, Emmanuel

2005-01-01

Filtrates were collected using a codisposal reaction wherein fly ash was reacted with acid mine drainage. These codisposal filtrates were then analyzed by X-ray Fluorescence spectrometry for quantitative determination of the SiO2 and Al2O3 content. Alkaline hydrothermal zeolite synthesis was then applied to the filtrates to convert the fly ash material into zeolites. The zeolites formed under the experimental conditions were faujasite, sodalite, and zeolite A. The use of the fly ash-derived zeolites and a commercial zeolite was explored in wastewater decontamination experiments as it was applied to acid mine drainage in different dosages. The concentrations of Ni, Zn, Cd, As, and Pb metal ions in the treated wastewater were investigated. The results of the treatment of the acid mine drainage with the prepared fly ash zeolites showed that the concentrations of Ni, Zn, Cd, and Hg were decreased as the zeolite dosages of the fly ash zeolite (FAZ1) increased.

Data Mining and Machine Learning Tools for Combinatorial Material Science of All-Oxide Photovoltaic Cells.

PubMed

Yosipof, Abraham; Nahum, Oren E; Anderson, Assaf Y; Barad, Hannah-Noa; Zaban, Arie; Senderowitz, Hanoch

2015-06-01

Growth in energy demands, coupled with the need for clean energy, are likely to make solar cells an important part of future energy resources. In particular, cells entirely made of metal oxides (MOs) have the potential to provide clean and affordable energy if their power conversion efficiencies are improved. Such improvements require the development of new MOs which could benefit from combining combinatorial material sciences for producing solar cells libraries with data mining tools to direct synthesis efforts. In this work we developed a data mining workflow and applied it to the analysis of two recently reported solar cell libraries based on Titanium and Copper oxides. Our results demonstrate that QSAR models with good prediction statistics for multiple solar cells properties could be developed and that these models highlight important factors affecting these properties in accord with experimental findings. The resulting models are therefore suitable for designing better solar cells. © 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Particle size distribution of the radon progeny and ambient aerosols in the Underground Tourist Route "Liczyrzepa" Mine in Kowary Adit

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wołoszczuk, Katarzyna; Skubacz, Krystian

2018-01-01

Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection, in cooperation with Central Mining Institute performed measurements of radon concentration in air, potential alpha energy concentration (PAEC), particle size distribution of the radon progeny and ambient aerosols in the Underground Tourist-Educational Route "Liczyrzepa" Mine in Kowary Adit. A research study was developed to investigate the appropriate dose conversion factors for short-lived radon progeny. The particle size distribution of radon progeny was determined using Radon Progeny Particle Size Spectrometer (RPPSS). The device allows to receive the distribution of PAEC in the particle size range from 0.6 nm to 2494 nm, based on their activity measured on 8 stages composed of impaction plates or diffusion screens. The measurements of the ambient airborne particle size distribution were performed in the range from a few nanometres to about 20 micrometres using Aerodynamic Particle Sizer (APS) spectrometer and the Scanning Mobility Particle Sizer Spectrometer (SMPS).

Applying linguistic methods to understanding smoking-related conversations on Twitter.

PubMed

Sanders-Jackson, Ashley; Brown, Cati G; Prochaska, Judith J

2015-03-01

Social media, such as Twitter, have become major channels of communication and commentary on popular culture, including conversations on our nation's leading addiction: tobacco. The current study examined Twitter conversations following two tobacco-related events in the media: (1) President Obama's doctor announcing that he had quit smoking and (2) the release of a photograph of Miley Cyrus (a former Disney child star) smoking a cigarette. With a focus on high-profile individuals whose actions can draw public attention, we aimed to characterise tobacco-related conversations as an example of tobacco-related public discourse and to present a novel methodology for studying social media. Tweets were collected 11-13 November 2011 (President Obama) and 1-3 August 2011 (Miley Cyrus) and analysed for relative frequency of terms, a novel application of a linguistic methodology. The President Obama data set (N=2749 tweets) had conversations about him quitting tobacco as well as a preponderance of information on political activity, links to websites, racialised terms and mention of marijuana. Websites and terms about Obama's smoke-free status were most central to the conversation. In the Miley Cyrus data (N=4746 tweets), terms that occurred with the greatest relative frequency were positive, emotional and supportive of quitting (eg, love, and please), with words such as 'love' most central to the conversation. People are talking about tobacco-related issues on Twitter, and semantic network analysis can be used to characterise on-line conversations. Future interventions may be able to harness social media and major current events to raise awareness of smoking-related issues. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

A data mining method to facilitate SAR transfer.

PubMed

Wassermann, Anne Mai; Bajorath, Jürgen

2011-08-22

A challenging practical problem in medicinal chemistry is the transfer of SAR information from one chemical series to another. Currently, there are no computational methods available to rationalize or support this process. Herein, we present a data mining approach that enables the identification of alternative analog series with different core structures, corresponding substitution patterns, and comparable potency progression. Scaffolds can be exchanged between these series and new analogs suggested that incorporate preferred R-groups. The methodology can be applied to search for alternative analog series if one series is known or, alternatively, to systematically assess SAR transfer potential in compound databases.

Data Mining Applied to Analysis of Contraceptive Methods Among College Students.

PubMed

Simões, Priscyla Waleska; Cesconetto, Samuel; Dalló, Eduardo Daminelli; de Souza Pires, Maria Marlene; Comunello, Eros; Borges Tomaz, Felipe; Xavier, Eduardo Pícolo; da Rosa Brunel Alves, Pedro Antonio; Ceretta, Luciane Bisognin; Manenti, Sandra Aparecida

2017-01-01

The aim of this study was to use the Data Mining to analyze the profile of the use of contraceptive methods in a university population. We used a database about sexuality performed on a university population in southern Brazil. The results obtained by the generated rules are largely in line with the literature and epidemiology worldwide, showing significant points of vulnerability in the university population. Validation measures of the study, as such, accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and area under the ROC curve were higher or at least similar as compared to recent studies using the same methodology.

Protein classification using sequential pattern mining.

PubMed

Exarchos, Themis P; Papaloukas, Costas; Lampros, Christos; Fotiadis, Dimitrios I

2006-01-01

Protein classification in terms of fold recognition can be employed to determine the structural and functional properties of a newly discovered protein. In this work sequential pattern mining (SPM) is utilized for sequence-based fold recognition. One of the most efficient SPM algorithms, cSPADE, is employed for protein primary structure analysis. Then a classifier uses the extracted sequential patterns for classifying proteins of unknown structure in the appropriate fold category. The proposed methodology exhibited an overall accuracy of 36% in a multi-class problem of 17 candidate categories. The classification performance reaches up to 65% when the three most probable protein folds are considered.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Dionne, B.; Tzanos, C. P.

To support the safety analyses required for the conversion of the Belgian Reactor 2 (BR2) from highly-enriched uranium (HEU) to low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel, the simulation of a number of loss-of-flow tests, with or without loss of pressure, has been undertaken. These tests were performed at BR2 in 1963 and used instrumented fuel assemblies (FAs) with thermocouples (TC) imbedded in the cladding as well as probes to measure the FAs power on the basis of their coolant temperature rise. The availability of experimental data for these tests offers an opportunity to better establish the credibility of the RELAP5-3D model andmore » methodology used in the conversion analysis. In order to support the HEU to LEU conversion safety analyses of the BR2 reactor, RELAP simulations of a number of loss-of-flow/loss-of-pressure tests have been undertaken. Preliminary analyses showed that the conservative power distributions used historically in the BR2 RELAP model resulted in a significant overestimation of the peak cladding temperature during the transient. Therefore, it was concluded that better estimates of the steady-state and decay power distributions were needed to accurately predict the cladding temperatures measured during the tests and establish the credibility of the RELAP model and methodology. The new approach ('best estimate' methodology) uses the MCNP5, ORIGEN-2 and BERYL codes to obtain steady-state and decay power distributions for the BR2 core during the tests A/400/1, C/600/3 and F/400/1. This methodology can be easily extended to simulate any BR2 core configuration. Comparisons with measured peak cladding temperatures showed a much better agreement when power distributions obtained with the new methodology are used.« less

Isotope biogeochemical assessment of natural biodegradation processes in open cast pit mining landscapes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jeschke, Christina; Knöller, Kay; Koschorreck, Matthias; Ussath, Maria; Hoth, Nils

2014-05-01

In Germany, a major share of the energy production is based on the burning of lignite from open cast pit mines. The remediation and re-cultivation of the former mining areas in the Lusatian and Central German lignite mining district is an enormous technical and economical challenge. After mine closures, the surrounding landscapes are threatened by acid mine drainage (AMD), i.e. the acidification and mineralization of rising groundwater with metals and inorganic contaminants. The high content of sulfur (sulfuric acid, sulfate), nitrogen (ammonium) and iron compounds (iron-hydroxides) deteriorates the groundwater quality and decelerates sustainable development of tourism in (former) mining landscapes. Natural biodegradation or attenuation (NA) processes of inorganic contaminants are considered to be a technically low impact and an economically beneficial solution. The investigations of the stable isotope compositions of compounds involved in NA processes helps clarify the dynamics of natural degradation and provides specific informations on retention processes of sulfate and nitrogen-compounds in mine dump water, mine dump sediment, and residual pit lakes. In an active mine dump we investigated zones where the process of bacterial sulfate reduction, as one very important NA process, takes place and how NA can be enhanced by injecting reactive substrates. Stable isotopes signatures of sulfur and nitrogen components were examined and evaluated in concert with hydrogeochemical data. In addition, we delineated the sources of ammonium pollution in mine dump sediments and investigated nitrification by 15N-labeling techniques to calculate the limit of the conversion of harmful ammonium to nitrate in residual mining lakes. Ultimately, we provided an isotope biogeochemical assessment of natural attenuation of sulfate and ammonium at mine dump sites and mining lakes. Also, we estimated the risk potential for water in different compartments of the hydrological system. In laboratory experiments, we tested reactive materials that may speed up the process of bacterial sulfate reduction. In in-situ experiments, we quantified nitrification rates. Based on the results, we are able to suggest promising technical measures that enhance natural attenuation processes at mine dump site and in mining lakes. The natural water cycle in lignite mining landscapes is heavily impacted by human activities. Basically, nature is capable of cleaning itself to a certain extent after mining activities stopped. However, it is our responsibility to support biogeochemical processes to make them more efficient and more sustainable. Isotopic monitoring proved to be an excellent tool for assessing the relevance and performance of different re-cultivation measures for a positive long-term development of the water quality in large-scale aquatic systems affected by the impact of lignite mining.

Regional Differences in Demand for Coal as A Basis for Development of A Product Distribution Model for Mining Companies in the Individual Customers Segment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Magda, Roman; Bogacz, Paweł; Franik, Tadeusz; Celej, Maciej; Migza, Marcin

2014-10-01

The article presents a proposal of methodology based on the process of relationship marketing, serving to determine the level of demand for coal in the individual customer segment, as well as fuel distribution model for this customer group in Poland developed on the basis of this methodology. It also includes selected results of tests carried out using the proposed methods. These proposals have been defined on the basis of market capacity indicators, which can be determined for the district level based on data from the Polish Central Statistical Office. The study also included the use of linear programming, based on the cost of coal logistics, data concerning railway, road and storage infrastructure present on the Polish market and taking into account the legal aspects. The presented results may provide a basis for mining companies to develop a system of coal distribution management in the locations with the highest demand values.

Coal resource assessments using coal availability and recoverability methods

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Rohrbacher, T.J.

1997-12-01

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in conjunction with state geological surveys and other federal agencies, has initiated a study and developed methodology to reassess the nation`s major coal resources. This study differs from previous coal resource assessments of the USGS, U.S. Bureau of Mines, and the Department of Energy`s Energy Information Administration, because this program: (1) Identifies and characterizes the coal beds and coal zones that will provide the bulk of the nation`s coal-derived energy during the first quarter of the twenty-first century; (2) organizes geologic, chemical, environmental, and geographic information in digital format and makes these data available tomore » the public through the Internet or other digital media, such as CD ROMs; (3) includes coal resource availability and coal recoverability analyses for selected areas; (4) provides economic assessments and coal recoverability analyses for selected areas; (5) provides methodology to perform socio-economic impact analysis related to coal mining in specific geographical areas as small as a county.« less

Investigating interactional competencies in Parkinson's disease: the potential benefits of a conversation analytic approach.

PubMed

Griffiths, Sarah; Barnes, Rebecca; Britten, Nicky; Wilkinson, Ray

2011-01-01

Around 70% of people who develop Parkinson's disease (PD) experience speech and voice changes. Clinicians often find that when asked about their primary communication concerns, PD clients will talk about the difficulties they have 'getting into' conversations. This is an important area for clients and it has implications for quality of life and clinical management. To review the extant literature on PD and communication impairments in order to reveal key topic areas, the range of methodologies applied, and any gaps in knowledge relating to PD and social interaction and how these might be usefully addressed. A systematic search of a number of key databases and available grey literatures regarding PD and communication impairment was conducted (including motor speech changes, intelligibility, cognitive/language changes) to obtain a sense of key areas and methodologies applied. Research applying conversation analysis in the field of communication disability was also reviewed to illustrate the value of this methodology in uncovering common interactional difficulties, and in revealing the use of strategic collaborative competencies in naturally occurring conversation. In addition, available speech and language therapy assessment and intervention approaches to PD were examined with a view to their effectiveness in promoting individualized intervention planning and advice-giving for everyday interaction. A great deal has been written about the deficits underpinning communication changes in PD and the impact of communication disability on the self and others as measured in a clinical setting. Less is known about what happens for this client group in everyday conversations outside of the clinic. Current speech and language therapy assessments and interventions focus on the individual and are largely impairment based or focused on compensatory speaker-oriented techniques. A conversation analysis approach would complement basic research on what actually happens in everyday conversation for people with PD and their co-participants. The potential benefits of a conversation analysis approach to communication disability in PD include enabling a shift in clinical focus from individual impairment onto strategic collaborative competencies. This would have implications for client-centred intervention planning and the development of new and complementary clinical resources addressing participation. The impact would be new and improved support for those living with the condition as well as their families and carers. © 2011 Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists.

Exploring Ethnohistory and Indigenous Scholarship: What Is the Relevance to Educational Historians?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McGregor, Heather E.

2014-01-01

For educational historians involved in the representation of Indigenous contexts and peoples, what is the relevance of ethnohistory as a discipline or methodology, and what is lost or gained in using it? This article reviews ethnohistorical literature, and brings it in conversation with literature by Indigenous scholars on research methodologies,…

Tough Teens: The Methodological Challenges of Interviewing Teenagers as Research Participants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bassett, Raewyn; Beagan, Brenda L.; Ristovski-Slijepcevic, Svetlana; Chapman, Gwen E.

2008-01-01

Encouraging a teenager to have a conversation in a semistructured research interview is fraught with difficulties. The authors discuss the methodological challenges encountered when interviewing adolescents of European Canadian, African Canadian, and Punjabi Canadian families who took part in the Family Food Decision-Making Study in two regions of…

Toward a Learning Behavior Tracking Methodology for CA-for-SLA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Markee, Numa

2008-01-01

This paper is principally about methodology. It first summarizes five issues in the emerging research agenda of conversation analysis-for-second language acquisition (CA-for-SLA), and develops empirically based analyses of classroom talk that occurs over several days and months to illustrate how a longitudinal learning behavior tracking (LBT)…

The Relationship between Ethical Positions and Methodological Approaches: A Scandinavian Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beach, Dennis; Eriksson, Anita

2010-01-01

In this article, based on reading ethnographic theses, books and articles and conversations with nine key informants, we have tried to describe how research ethics are approached and written about in educational ethnography in Scandinavia. The article confirms findings from previous research that there are different methodological forms of…

Windblown Dust Deposition Forecasting and Spread of Contamination around Mine Tailings.

PubMed

Stovern, Michael; Guzmán, Héctor; Rine, Kyle P; Felix, Omar; King, Matthew; Ela, Wendell P; Betterton, Eric A; Sáez, Avelino Eduardo

2016-02-01

Wind erosion, transport and deposition of windblown dust from anthropogenic sources, such as mine tailings impoundments, can have significant effects on the surrounding environment. The lack of vegetation and the vertical protrusion of the mine tailings above the neighboring terrain make the tailings susceptible to wind erosion. Modeling the erosion, transport and deposition of particulate matter from mine tailings is a challenge for many reasons, including heterogeneity of the soil surface, vegetative canopy coverage, dynamic meteorological conditions and topographic influences. In this work, a previously developed Deposition Forecasting Model (DFM) that is specifically designed to model the transport of particulate matter from mine tailings impoundments is verified using dust collection and topsoil measurements. The DFM is initialized using data from an operational Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The forecast deposition patterns are compared to dust collected by inverted-disc samplers and determined through gravimetric, chemical composition and lead isotopic analysis. The DFM is capable of predicting dust deposition patterns from the tailings impoundment to the surrounding area. The methodology and approach employed in this work can be generalized to other contaminated sites from which dust transport to the local environment can be assessed as a potential route for human exposure.

Windblown Dust Deposition Forecasting and Spread of Contamination around Mine Tailings

PubMed Central

Stovern, Michael; Guzmán, Héctor; Rine, Kyle P.; Felix, Omar; King, Matthew; Ela, Wendell P.; Betterton, Eric A.; Sáez, Avelino Eduardo

2017-01-01

Wind erosion, transport and deposition of windblown dust from anthropogenic sources, such as mine tailings impoundments, can have significant effects on the surrounding environment. The lack of vegetation and the vertical protrusion of the mine tailings above the neighboring terrain make the tailings susceptible to wind erosion. Modeling the erosion, transport and deposition of particulate matter from mine tailings is a challenge for many reasons, including heterogeneity of the soil surface, vegetative canopy coverage, dynamic meteorological conditions and topographic influences. In this work, a previously developed Deposition Forecasting Model (DFM) that is specifically designed to model the transport of particulate matter from mine tailings impoundments is verified using dust collection and topsoil measurements. The DFM is initialized using data from an operational Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The forecast deposition patterns are compared to dust collected by inverted-disc samplers and determined through gravimetric, chemical composition and lead isotopic analysis. The DFM is capable of predicting dust deposition patterns from the tailings impoundment to the surrounding area. The methodology and approach employed in this work can be generalized to other contaminated sites from which dust transport to the local environment can be assessed as a potential route for human exposure. PMID:29082035

Commercial Online Social Network Data and Statin Side-Effect Surveillance: A Pilot Observational Study of Aggregate Mentions on Facebook.

PubMed

Huesch, Marco D

2017-12-01

Surveillance of the safety of prescribed drugs after marketing approval has been secured remains fraught with complications. Formal ascertainment by providers and reporting to adverse-event registries, formal surveys by manufacturers, and mining of electronic medical records are all well-known approaches with varying degrees of difficulty, cost, and success. Novel approaches may be a useful adjunct, especially approaches that mine or sample internet-based methods such as online social networks. A novel commercial software-as-a-service data-mining product supplied by Sysomos from Datasift/Facebook was used to mine all mentions on Facebook of statins and stain-related side effects in the US in the 1-month period 9 January 2017 through 8 February 2017. A total of 4.3% of all 25,700 mentions of statins also mentioned typical stain-related side effects. Multiple methodological weaknesses stymie interpretation of this percentage, which is however not inconsistent with estimates that 5-20% of patients taking statins will experience typical side effects at some time. Future work on pharmacovigilance may be informed by this novel commercial tool, but the inability to mine the full text of a posting poses serious challenges to content categorization.

USGS compilation of geographic information system (GIS) data representing coal mines and coal-bearing areas in China

USGS Publications Warehouse

Trippi, Michael H.; Belkin, Harvey E.; Dai, Shifeng; Tewalt, Susan J.; Chou, Chiu-Jung; Trippi, Michael H.; Belkin, Harvey E.; Dai, Shifeng; Tewalt, Susan J.; Chou, Chiu-Jung

2015-01-01

Geographic information system (GIS) information may facilitate energy studies, which in turn provide input for energy policy decisions. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has compiled geographic information system (GIS) data representing the known coal mine locations and coal-mining areas of China as of 2001. These data are now available for download, and may be used in a GIS for a variety of energy resource and environmental studies of China. Province-scale maps were also created to display the point locations of coal mines and the coal-mining areas. In addition, coal-field outlines from a previously published map by Dai and others (2012) were also digitized and are available for download as a separate GIS data file, and shown in a nation-scale map of China. Chemical data for 332 coal samples from a previous USGS study of China and Taiwan (Tewalt and others, 2010) are included in a downloadable GIS point shapefile, and shown on a nation-scale map of China. A brief report summarizes the methodology used for creation of the shapefiles and the chemical analyses run on the samples.

Environmental geology of the Wilcox Group Lignite Belt, east Texas

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Henry, C.D.; Basciano, J.M.

This report provides a data base for decisions about lignite mining and reclamation in the Wilcox Group of East Texas. A set of environmental geologic maps, which accompanies this report, depicts the character of the land that will be affected by mining. The environmental geologic maps of the East Texas lignite belt provide an accurate inventory of land resources. The maps identify areas where mining is most likely to occur, areas of critical natural resources that could be affected by mining, such as aquifer recharge areas, and areas of natural hazards, such as floodplains. Principal areas of both active andmore » planned surface mining are also located. The seven environmental geologic maps cover the outcrop area of the Wilcox Group, the major lignite host, and adjacent geologic units from Bastrop County to Texarkana. This report begins with a discussion of various physical aspects of the lignite belt, including geology, hydrology, soils, climate, and land use, to aid in understanding the maps. The criteria and methodology used to delineate the environmental geologic units are discussed. Varied applications of the environmental geologic maps are considered. 23 references, 9 figures, 3 tables.« less

Process mining is an underutilized clinical research tool in transfusion medicine.

PubMed

Quinn, Jason G; Conrad, David M; Cheng, Calvino K

2017-03-01

To understand inventory performance, transfusion services commonly use key performance indicators (KPIs) as summary descriptors of inventory efficiency that are graphed, trended, and used to benchmark institutions. Here, we summarize current limitations in KPI-based evaluation of blood bank inventory efficiency and propose process mining as an ideal methodology for application to inventory management research to improve inventory flows and performance. The transit of a blood product from inventory receipt to final disposition is complex and relates to many internal and external influences, and KPIs may be inadequate to fully understand the complexity of the blood supply chain and how units interact with its processes. Process mining lends itself well to analysis of blood bank inventories, and modern laboratory information systems can track nearly all of the complex processes that occur in the blood bank. Process mining is an analytical tool already used in other industries and can be applied to blood bank inventory management and research through laboratory information systems data using commercial applications. Although the current understanding of real blood bank inventories is value-centric through KPIs, it potentially can be understood from a process-centric lens using process mining. © 2017 AABB.

Assessing ecotoxicity of biomining effluents in stream ecosystems by in situ invertebrate bioassays: A case study in Talvivaara, Finland.

PubMed

Salmelin, Johanna; Leppänen, Matti T; Karjalainen, Anna K; Vuori, Kari-Matti; Gerhardt, Almut; Hämäläinen, Heikki

2017-01-01

Mining of sulfide-rich pyritic ores produces acid mine drainage waters and has induced major ecological problems in aquatic ecosystems worldwide. Biomining utilizes microbes to extract metals from the ore, and it has been suggested as a new sustainable way to produce metals. However, little is known of the potential ecotoxicological effects of biomining. In the present study, biomining impacts were assessed using survival and behavioral responses of aquatic macroinvertebrates at in situ exposures in streams. The authors used an impedance conversion technique to measure quantitatively in situ behavioral responses of larvae of the regionally common mayfly, Heptagenia dalecarlica, to discharges from the Talvivaara mine (Sotkamo, Northern Finland), which uses a biomining technique. Behavioral responses measured in 3 mine-impacted streams were compared with those measured in 3 reference streams. In addition, 3-d survival of the mayfly larvae and the oligochaete Lumbriculus variegatus was measured in the study sites. Biomining impacts on stream water quality included increased concentrations of sulfur, sulfate, and metals, especially manganese, cadmium, zinc, sodium, and calcium. Survival of the invertebrates in the short term was not affected by the mine effluents. In contrast, apparent behavioral changes in mayfly larvae were detected, but these responses were not consistent among sites, which may reflect differing natural water chemistry of the study sites. Environ Toxicol Chem 2017;36:147-155. © 2016 SETAC. © 2016 SETAC.

Mining biomedical images towards valuable information retrieval in biomedical and life sciences

PubMed Central

Ahmed, Zeeshan; Zeeshan, Saman; Dandekar, Thomas

2016-01-01

Biomedical images are helpful sources for the scientists and practitioners in drawing significant hypotheses, exemplifying approaches and describing experimental results in published biomedical literature. In last decades, there has been an enormous increase in the amount of heterogeneous biomedical image production and publication, which results in a need for bioimaging platforms for feature extraction and analysis of text and content in biomedical images to take advantage in implementing effective information retrieval systems. In this review, we summarize technologies related to data mining of figures. We describe and compare the potential of different approaches in terms of their developmental aspects, used methodologies, produced results, achieved accuracies and limitations. Our comparative conclusions include current challenges for bioimaging software with selective image mining, embedded text extraction and processing of complex natural language queries. PMID:27538578

Agile text mining for the 2014 i2b2/UTHealth Cardiac risk factors challenge.

PubMed

Cormack, James; Nath, Chinmoy; Milward, David; Raja, Kalpana; Jonnalagadda, Siddhartha R

2015-12-01

This paper describes the use of an agile text mining platform (Linguamatics' Interactive Information Extraction Platform, I2E) to extract document-level cardiac risk factors in patient records as defined in the i2b2/UTHealth 2014 challenge. The approach uses a data-driven rule-based methodology with the addition of a simple supervised classifier. We demonstrate that agile text mining allows for rapid optimization of extraction strategies, while post-processing can leverage annotation guidelines, corpus statistics and logic inferred from the gold standard data. We also show how data imbalance in a training set affects performance. Evaluation of this approach on the test data gave an F-Score of 91.7%, one percent behind the top performing system. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

New data on the level of contamination with tritium aerosol fallout in the nearest influence zone of the mining-chemical combine of the Rosatom State Corporation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bondareva, L. G.; Rubailo, A. I.

2016-03-01

The influence of tritium aerosol transport on radioactive contamination on the territory of the Krasnoyarsk region influenced by the mining-chemical combine of the Rosatom State Corporation was studied. Snow cover, foliage, and needles collected at various distances from the mining-chemical combine were selected as the object of this study. A new methodology of liquid extraction from plant material (leaves and needles) was worked out. As a result, the maximal concentrations of tritium (15 kBk/m3 in snow, 11 and 15 Bk/m2 for leaves and pine-tree needles, respectively) were determined. However, the results obtained are not anomalous. Consequently, contamination with tritium may not be accounted for entirely due to the low concentrations.

Applications of Data Mining Methods in the Integrative Medical Studies of Coronary Heart Disease: Progress and Prospect

PubMed Central

Wang, Yixin; Guo, Fang

2014-01-01

A large amount of studies show that real-world study has strong external validity than the traditional randomized controlled trials and can evaluate the effect of interventions in a real clinical setting, which open up a new path for researches of integrative medicine in coronary heart disease. However, clinical data of integrative medicine in coronary heart disease are large in amount and complex in data types, making exploring the appropriate methodology a hot topic. Data mining techniques are to analyze and dig out useful information and knowledge from the mass data to guide people's practices. The present review provides insights for the main features of data mining and their applications of integrative medical studies in coronary heart disease, aiming to analyze the progress and prospect in this field. PMID:25544853

State of remediation and metal toxicity in the Tri-State Mining District, USA.

PubMed

Johnson, Aaron W; Gutiérrez, Mélida; Gouzie, Douglas; McAliley, L Rex

2016-02-01

Mining operations in the Tri-State Mining District of Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma (TSMD), once one of the major lead and zinc mining areas in the world, had completely ceased by 1970. As mining companies moved out, the land was left with underground tunnels and mine shafts and the surface with abandoned tailings piles, which progressively contaminated groundwater and soil. Despite remedial actions undertaken in the 1980's, areas within the TSMD still contain Cd, Pb, and Zn concentrations exceeding safe levels. Because of the large area and highly dispersed occurrence of wastes, environmental studies generally have been confined either to a stream basin or to a single state. Studies also have differed in their approach and analytical methodologies. An overview of the totality of the TSMD and its present state of contamination is presented here. Data show that metal content in sediments have the following common features: (1) a wide range of Pb and Zn concentrations, up to three orders of magnitude, (2) median values for Cd, Pb and Zn content in sediments and soils were similar among studies, (3) median values for most studies were at or above the guidelines recommended for aquatic habitats, and (4) highest content of Pb and Zn were closely associated with the geographical location of former mining and smelting centers. The above observations imply that mine wastes remain a problem and further remediation is needed. Cost-effective remedial alternatives for this area's geology, climate, and land use, are discussed. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Text mining for traditional Chinese medical knowledge discovery: a survey.

PubMed

Zhou, Xuezhong; Peng, Yonghong; Liu, Baoyan

2010-08-01

Extracting meaningful information and knowledge from free text is the subject of considerable research interest in the machine learning and data mining fields. Text data mining (or text mining) has become one of the most active research sub-fields in data mining. Significant developments in the area of biomedical text mining during the past years have demonstrated its great promise for supporting scientists in developing novel hypotheses and new knowledge from the biomedical literature. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) provides a distinct methodology with which to view human life. It is one of the most complete and distinguished traditional medicines with a history of several thousand years of studying and practicing the diagnosis and treatment of human disease. It has been shown that the TCM knowledge obtained from clinical practice has become a significant complementary source of information for modern biomedical sciences. TCM literature obtained from the historical period and from modern clinical studies has recently been transformed into digital data in the form of relational databases or text documents, which provide an effective platform for information sharing and retrieval. This motivates and facilitates research and development into knowledge discovery approaches and to modernize TCM. In order to contribute to this still growing field, this paper presents (1) a comparative introduction to TCM and modern biomedicine, (2) a survey of the related information sources of TCM, (3) a review and discussion of the state of the art and the development of text mining techniques with applications to TCM, (4) a discussion of the research issues around TCM text mining and its future directions. Copyright 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Top-down methodology for human factors research

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sibert, J.

1983-01-01

User computer interaction as a conversation is discussed. The design of user interfaces which depends on viewing communications between a user and the computer as a conversion is presented. This conversation includes inputs to the computer (outputs from the user), outputs from the computer (inputs to the user), and the sequencing in both time and space of those outputs and inputs. The conversation is viewed from the user's side of the conversation. Two languages are modeled: the one with which the user communicates with the computer and the language where communication flows from the computer to the user. Both languages exist on three levels; the semantic, syntactic and lexical. It is suggested that natural languages can also be considered in these terms.

A GLOBAL METHANE EMISSIONS PROGRAM FOR LANDFILLS, COAL MINES, AND NATURAL GAS SYSTEMS

EPA Science Inventory

The paper gives the scope and methodology of EPA/AEERL's methane emissions studies and discloses data accumulated thus far in the program. Anthropogenic methane emissions are a principal focus in AEERL's global climate research program, including three major sources: municipal so...

Bioinformatics in Undergraduate Education: Practical Examples

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Boyle, John A.

2004-01-01

Bioinformatics has emerged as an important research tool in recent years. The ability to mine large databases for relevant information has become increasingly central to many different aspects of biochemistry and molecular biology. It is important that undergraduates be introduced to the available information and methodologies. We present a…

Use of IT platform in determination of efficiency of mining machines

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brodny, Jarosław; Tutak, Magdalena

2018-01-01

Determination of effective use of mining devices has very significant meaning for mining enterprises. High costs of their purchase and tenancy cause that these enterprises tend to the best use of possessed technical potential. However, specifics of mining production causes that this process not always proceeds without interferences. Practical experiences show that determination of objective measure of utilization of machine in mining enterprise is not simple. In the paper a proposition for solution of this problem is presented. For this purpose an IT platform and overall efficiency model OEE were used. This model enables to evaluate the machine in a range of its availability performance and quality of product, and constitutes a quantitative tool of TPM strategy. Adapted to the specificity of mining branch the OEE model together with acquired data from industrial automatic system enabled to determine the partial indicators and overall efficiency of tested machines. Studies were performed for a set of machines directly use in coal exploitation process. They were: longwall-shearer and armoured face conveyor, and beam stage loader. Obtained results clearly indicate that degree of use of machines by mining enterprises are unsatisfactory. Use of IT platforms will significantly facilitate the process of registration, archiving and analytical processing of the acquired data. In the paper there is presented methodology of determination of partial indices and total OEE together with a practical example of its application for investigated machines set. Also IT platform was characterized for its construction, function and application.

An Investigation of the Role of Learning Conversations in Youth's Authoring of Science Identities during an Informal Science Camp

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Riedinger, Kelly; McGinnis, J. Randy

2017-01-01

In this investigation, we examined how youth during learning conversations at an informal science education camp negotiated and authored identities as learners of science. Using identity theory as our analytical lens, we investigated by application of qualitative methodology the socially constructed nature of youth's identities. We focused on the…

Optimized synthesis of lipase-catalyzed hexyl acetate in n-hexane by response surface methodology.

PubMed

Shieh, C J; Chang, S W

2001-03-01

Hexyl acetate, a short-chain ester with fruity odor, is a significant green note flavor compound and widely used in the food industry. The ability for immobilized lipase from Mucor miehei (Lipozyme IM-77) to catalyze the transesterification of hexanol with triacetin was investigated in this study. Response surface methodology and five-level-five-factor central composite rotatable design were adopted to evaluate the effects of synthesis variables, such as reaction time (2-10 h), temperature (25-65 degrees C), enzyme amount (10-50%; 0.024-0.118 BAUN), substrate molar ratio of triacetin to hexanol (1:1 to 3:1), and added water content (0-20%) on percentage molar conversion of hexyl acetate. The results showed that reaction temperature and substrate molar ratio were the most important parameters and that added water content had less of an effect on percent molar conversion. On the basis of canonical analysis, optimum synthesis conditions were as follows: reaction time, 7.7 h; temperature, 52.6 degrees C; enzyme amount, 37.1% (0.089 BAUN); substrate molar ratio, 2.7:1; and added water, 12.5%. The predicted value was 88.9% molar conversion, and the actual experimental value was 86.6% molar conversion.

Process Mining Methodology for Health Process Tracking Using Real-Time Indoor Location Systems.

PubMed

Fernandez-Llatas, Carlos; Lizondo, Aroa; Monton, Eduardo; Benedi, Jose-Miguel; Traver, Vicente

2015-11-30

The definition of efficient and accurate health processes in hospitals is crucial for ensuring an adequate quality of service. Knowing and improving the behavior of the surgical processes in a hospital can improve the number of patients that can be operated on using the same resources. However, the measure of this process is usually made in an obtrusive way, forcing nurses to get information and time data, affecting the proper process and generating inaccurate data due to human errors during the stressful journey of health staff in the operating theater. The use of indoor location systems can take time information about the process in an unobtrusive way, freeing nurses, allowing them to engage in purely welfare work. However, it is necessary to present these data in a understandable way for health professionals, who cannot deal with large amounts of historical localization log data. The use of process mining techniques can deal with this problem, offering an easily understandable view of the process. In this paper, we present a tool and a process mining-based methodology that, using indoor location systems, enables health staff not only to represent the process, but to know precise information about the deployment of the process in an unobtrusive and transparent way. We have successfully tested this tool in a real surgical area with 3613 patients during February, March and April of 2015.

Cross-industry standard process for data mining is applicable to the lung cancer surgery domain, improving decision making as well as knowledge and quality management.

PubMed

Rivo, Eduardo; de la Fuente, Javier; Rivo, Ángel; García-Fontán, Eva; Cañizares, Miguel-Ángel; Gil, Pedro

2012-01-01

The aim of this study was to assess the applicability of knowledge discovery in database methodology, based upon data mining techniques, to the investigation of lung cancer surgery. According to CRISP 1.0 methodology, a data mining (DM) project was developed on a data warehouse containing records for 501 patients operated on for lung cancer with curative intention. The modelling technique was logistic regression. The finally selected model presented the following values: sensitivity 9.68%, specificity 100%, global precision 94.02%, positive predictive value 100% and negative predictive value 93.98% for a cut-off point set at 0.5. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was constructed. The area under the curve (CI 95%) was 0.817 (0.740- 0.893) (p < 0.05). Statistical association with perioperative mortality was found for the following variables [odds ratio (CI 95%)]: age over 70 [2.3822 (1.0338-5.4891)], heart disease [2.4875 (1.0089-6.1334)], peripheral arterial disease [5.7705 (1.9296-17.2570)], pneumonectomy [3.6199 (1.4939-8.7715)] and length of surgery (min) [1.0067 (1.0008-1.0126)]. The CRISP-DM process model is very suitable for lung cancer surgery analysis, improving decision making as well as knowledge and quality management.

Process Mining Methodology for Health Process Tracking Using Real-Time Indoor Location Systems

PubMed Central

Fernandez-Llatas, Carlos; Lizondo, Aroa; Monton, Eduardo; Benedi, Jose-Miguel; Traver, Vicente

2015-01-01

The definition of efficient and accurate health processes in hospitals is crucial for ensuring an adequate quality of service. Knowing and improving the behavior of the surgical processes in a hospital can improve the number of patients that can be operated on using the same resources. However, the measure of this process is usually made in an obtrusive way, forcing nurses to get information and time data, affecting the proper process and generating inaccurate data due to human errors during the stressful journey of health staff in the operating theater. The use of indoor location systems can take time information about the process in an unobtrusive way, freeing nurses, allowing them to engage in purely welfare work. However, it is necessary to present these data in a understandable way for health professionals, who cannot deal with large amounts of historical localization log data. The use of process mining techniques can deal with this problem, offering an easily understandable view of the process. In this paper, we present a tool and a process mining-based methodology that, using indoor location systems, enables health staff not only to represent the process, but to know precise information about the deployment of the process in an unobtrusive and transparent way. We have successfully tested this tool in a real surgical area with 3613 patients during February, March and April of 2015. PMID:26633395

The scope of the LeChatelier Principle

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

George M., Lady; Quirk, James P.

2007-07-01

LeChatelier [Comptes Rendus 99 (1884) 786; Ann. Mines 13 (2) (1888) 157] showed that a physical system's “adjustment” to a disturbance to its equilibrium tended to be smaller as constraints were added to the adjustment process. Samuelson [Foundations of Economic Analysis, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1947] applied this result to economics in the context of the comparative statics of the actions of individual agents characterized as the solutions to optimization problems; and later (1960), extended the application of the Principle to a stable, multi-market equilibrium and the case of all commodities gross substitutes [e.g., L. Metzler, Stability of multiple markets: the hicks conditions. Econometrica 13 (1945) 277-292]. Refinements and alternative routes of derivation have appeared in the literature since then, e.g., Silberberg [The LeChatelier Principle as a corollary to a generalized envelope theorem, J. Econ. Theory 3 (1971) 146-155; A revision of comparative statics methodology in economics, or, how to do comparative statics on the back of an envelope, J. Econ. Theory 7 (1974) 159-172], Milgrom and Roberts [The LeChatelier Principle, Am. Econ. Rev. 86 (1996) 173-179], W. Suen, E. Silberberg, P. Tseng [The LeChatelier Principle: the long and the short of it, Econ. Theory 16 (2000) 471-476], and Chavas [A global analysis of constrained behavior: the LeChatelier Principle ‘in the large’, South. Econ. J. 72 (3) (2006) 627-644]. In this paper, we expand the scope of the Principle in various ways keyed to Samuelson's proposed means of testing comparative statics results (optimization, stability, and qualitative analysis). In the optimization framework, we show that the converse LeChatelier Principle also can be found in constrained optimization problems and for not initially “conjugate” sensitivities. We then show how the Principle and its converse can be found through the qualitative analysis of any linear system. In these terms, the Principle and its converse also may be found in the same system at the same time with respect to the imposition of the same constraint. Based upon this, we expand the cases for which the Principle can be found based upon the stability hypothesis.

Moment tensor inversion with three-dimensional sensor configuration of mining induced seismicity (Kiruna mine, Sweden)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ma, Ju; Dineva, Savka; Cesca, Simone; Heimann, Sebastian

2018-06-01

Mining induced seismicity is an undesired consequence of mining operations, which poses significant hazard to miners and infrastructures and requires an accurate analysis of the rupture process. Seismic moment tensors of mining-induced events help to understand the nature of mining-induced seismicity by providing information about the relationship between the mining, stress redistribution and instabilities in the rock mass. In this work, we adapt and test a waveform-based inversion method on high frequency data recorded by a dense underground seismic system in one of the largest underground mines in the world (Kiruna mine, Sweden). A stable algorithm for moment tensor inversion for comparatively small mining induced earthquakes, resolving both the double-couple and full moment tensor with high frequency data, is very challenging. Moreover, the application to underground mining system requires accounting for the 3-D geometry of the monitoring system. We construct a Green's function database using a homogeneous velocity model, but assuming a 3-D distribution of potential sources and receivers. We first perform a set of moment tensor inversions using synthetic data to test the effects of different factors on moment tensor inversion stability and source parameters accuracy, including the network spatial coverage, the number of sensors and the signal-to-noise ratio. The influence of the accuracy of the input source parameters on the inversion results is also tested. Those tests show that an accurate selection of the inversion parameters allows resolving the moment tensor also in the presence of realistic seismic noise conditions. Finally, the moment tensor inversion methodology is applied to eight events chosen from mining block #33/34 at Kiruna mine. Source parameters including scalar moment, magnitude, double-couple, compensated linear vector dipole and isotropic contributions as well as the strike, dip and rake configurations of the double-couple term were obtained. The orientations of the nodal planes of the double-couple component in most cases vary from NNW to NNE with a dip along the ore body or in the opposite direction.

Moment Tensor Inversion with 3D sensor configuration of Mining Induced Seismicity (Kiruna mine, Sweden)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ma, Ju; Dineva, Savka; Cesca, Simone; Heimann, Sebastian

2018-03-01

Mining induced seismicity is an undesired consequence of mining operations, which poses significant hazard to miners and infrastructures and requires an accurate analysis of the rupture process. Seismic moment tensors of mining-induced events help to understand the nature of mining-induced seismicity by providing information about the relationship between the mining, stress redistribution and instabilities in the rock mass. In this work, we adapt and test a waveform-based inversion method on high frequency data recorded by a dense underground seismic system in one of the largest underground mines in the world (Kiruna mine, Sweden). Stable algorithm for moment tensor inversion for comparatively small mining induced earthquakes, resolving both the double couple and full moment tensor with high frequency data is very challenging. Moreover, the application to underground mining system requires accounting for the 3D geometry of the monitoring system. We construct a Green's function database using a homogeneous velocity model, but assuming a 3D distribution of potential sources and receivers. We first perform a set of moment tensor inversions using synthetic data to test the effects of different factors on moment tensor inversion stability and source parameters accuracy, including the network spatial coverage, the number of sensors and the signal-to-noise ratio. The influence of the accuracy of the input source parameters on the inversion results is also tested. Those tests show that an accurate selection of the inversion parameters allows resolving the moment tensor also in presence of realistic seismic noise conditions. Finally, the moment tensor inversion methodology is applied to 8 events chosen from mining block #33/34 at Kiruna mine. Source parameters including scalar moment, magnitude, double couple, compensated linear vector dipole and isotropic contributions as well as the strike, dip, rake configurations of the double couple term were obtained. The orientations of the nodal planes of the double-couple component in most cases vary from NNW to NNE with a dip along the ore body or in the opposite direction.

Vector data structure conversion at the EROS Data Center

USGS Publications Warehouse

van Roessel, Jan W.; Doescher, S.W.

1986-01-01

With the increasing prevalence of GIS systems and the processing of spatial data, conversion of data from one system to another has become a more serious problem. This report describes the approach taken to arrive at a solution at the EROS Data Center. The report consists of a main section and a number of appendices. The methodology is described in the main section, while the appendices have system specific descriptions. The overall approach is based on a central conversion hub consisting of a relational database manager and associated tools, with a standard data structure for the transfer of spatial data. This approach is the best compromise between the two goals of reducing the overall interfacing effort and producing efficient system interfaces, while the tools can be used to arrive at a progression of interface sophistication ranging from toolbench to smooth flow. The appendices provide detailed information on a number of spatial data handling systems and data structures and existing interfaces as well as interfaces developed with the described methodology.

Service lifetime prediction for encapsulated photovoltaic cells/minimodules

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Czanderna, A.W.; Jorgensen, G.J.

The overall purposes of this paper are to elucidate the crucial importance of predicting the service lifetime (SLP) for photovoltaics (PV) modules and to present an outline for developing a SLP methodology for encapsulated PV cells and minimodules. The specific objectives are (a) to illustrate the generic nature of SLP for several types of solar energy conversion or conversion devices, (b) to summarize the major durability issues concerned with these devices, (c) to justify using SLP in the triad of cost, performance, and durability instead of only durability, (d) to define and explain the seven major elements that comprise amore » generic SLP methodology, (e) to provide background about implementing the SLP methodology for PV cells and minimodules including the complexity of the encapsulation problems, (f) to summarize briefly the past focus of our task for improving and/or replacing ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) as a PV pottant, and (g) to provide an outline of our present and future studies using encapsulated PV cells and minimodules for improving the encapsulation of PV cells and predicting a service lifetime for them using the SLP methodology outlined in objective (d). By using this methodology, our major conclusion is that predicting the service lifetime of PV cells and minimodules is possible. {copyright} {ital 1997 American Institute of Physics.}« less

Exploring Virtual Mental Practice in Maintenance Task Training

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bauerle, Tim; Brnich, Michael J.; Navoyski, Jason

2016-01-01

Purpose: This paper aims to contribute to a general understanding of mental practice by investigating the utility of and participant reaction to a virtual reality maintenance training among underground coal mine first responders. Design/Methodology/Approach: Researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's Office of Mine…

Spatiotemporal Data Mining, Analysis, and Visualization of Human Activity Data

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Li, Xun

2012-01-01

This dissertation addresses the research challenge of developing efficient new methods for discovering useful patterns and knowledge in large volumes of electronically collected spatiotemporal activity data. I propose to analyze three types of such spatiotemporal activity data in a methodological framework that integrates spatial analysis, data…

Personalised Information Services Using a Hybrid Recommendation Method Based on Usage Frequency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kim, Yong; Chung, Min Gyo

2008-01-01

Purpose: This paper seeks to describe a personal recommendation service (PRS) involving an innovative hybrid recommendation method suitable for deployment in a large-scale multimedia user environment. Design/methodology/approach: The proposed hybrid method partitions content and user into segments and executes association rule mining,…

Reuse of “Waste” in Making Building Products –Methodology and Evaluation

EPA Science Inventory

The use of industrial by-products as a replacement to mined or extracted materials can save energy and other natural resources. However, it is important that you consider changes in the environmental conditions that a material may come into contact with either through chemical ...

77 FR 72766 - Small Business Size Standards: Support Activities for Mining

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-12-06

... its entirety for parties who have an interest in SBA's overall approach to establishing, evaluating....gov , Docket ID: SBA-2009- 0008. SBA continues to welcome comments on its methodology from interested.... Average firm size. SBA computes two measures of average firm size: simple average and weighted average...

Borges & Bikes Riders: Toward an Understanding of Autoethnography

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wamsted, John O.

2012-01-01

In this article the author--a full-time high school mathematics teacher and concurrent doctoral candidate in Department of Middle-Secondary Education and Instructional Technology at Georgia State University--will make a case for the use of an autoethnographic methodological tool he is calling "narrative mining." He will begin by briefly…

Geochemical data for environmental studies of mineral deposits at Nabesna, Kennecott, Orange Hill, Bond Creek, Bremner, and Gold Hill, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska

USGS Publications Warehouse

Eppinger, R.G.; Briggs, P.H.; Rosenkrans, D.S.; Ballestrazze, Vanessa; Aldir, Jose; Brown, Z.A.; Crock, J.G.; d'Angelo, W. M.; Doughten, M.W.; Fey, D.L.; Hageman, P.L.; Hopkins, R.T.; Knight, R.J.; Malcolm, M.J.; McHugh, J.B.; Meier, A.L.; Motooka, J.M.; O'Leary, R. M.; Roushey, B.H.; Sultley, S.J.; Theodorakos, P.M.; Wilson, S.A.

1999-01-01

Environmental geochemical investigations were carried out between 1994 and 1997 in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve (WRST), Alaska. Mineralized areas studied include the historic Nabesna gold mine/mill and surrounding areas; the historic Kennecott copper mill area and nearby Bonanza, Erie, Glacier, and Jumbo mines; the historic mill and gold mines in the Bremner district; the active gold placer mines at Gold Hill; and the unmined copper-molybdenum deposits at Orange Hill and Bond Creek. The purpose of the study was to determine the extent of possible environmental hazards associated with these mineralized areas and to establish background and baseline levels for selected elements. Thus, concentrations of a large suite of trace elements were determined to assess metal loadings in the various sample media collected. This report presents the methodology, analytical results, and sample descriptions for water, leachate, sediment, heavy-mineral concentrate, rock, and vegetation (willow) samples collected during these geochemical investigations. An interpretive U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper incorporating these geochemical data will follow.

An Agent-Based Data Mining System for Ontology Evolution

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hadzic, Maja; Dillon, Darshan

We have developed an evidence-based mental health ontological model that represents mental health in multiple dimensions. The ongoing addition of new mental health knowledge requires a continual update of the Mental Health Ontology. In this paper, we describe how the ontology evolution can be realized using a multi-agent system in combination with data mining algorithms. We use the TICSA methodology to design this multi-agent system which is composed of four different types of agents: Information agent, Data Warehouse agent, Data Mining agents and Ontology agent. We use UML 2.1 sequence diagrams to model the collaborative nature of the agents and a UML 2.1 composite structure diagram to model the structure of individual agents. The Mental Heath Ontology has the potential to underpin various mental health research experiments of a collaborative nature which are greatly needed in times of increasing mental distress and illness.

Predicting the disease of Alzheimer with SNP biomarkers and clinical data using data mining classification approach: decision tree.

PubMed

Erdoğan, Onur; Aydin Son, Yeşim

2014-01-01

Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) are the most common genomic variations where only a single nucleotide differs between individuals. Individual SNPs and SNP profiles associated with diseases can be utilized as biological markers. But there is a need to determine the SNP subsets and patients' clinical data which is informative for the diagnosis. Data mining approaches have the highest potential for extracting the knowledge from genomic datasets and selecting the representative SNPs as well as most effective and informative clinical features for the clinical diagnosis of the diseases. In this study, we have applied one of the widely used data mining classification methodology: "decision tree" for associating the SNP biomarkers and significant clinical data with the Alzheimer's disease (AD), which is the most common form of "dementia". Different tree construction parameters have been compared for the optimization, and the most accurate tree for predicting the AD is presented.

A fuzzy hill-climbing algorithm for the development of a compact associative classifier

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mitra, Soumyaroop; Lam, Sarah S.

2012-02-01

Classification, a data mining technique, has widespread applications including medical diagnosis, targeted marketing, and others. Knowledge discovery from databases in the form of association rules is one of the important data mining tasks. An integrated approach, classification based on association rules, has drawn the attention of the data mining community over the last decade. While attention has been mainly focused on increasing classifier accuracies, not much efforts have been devoted towards building interpretable and less complex models. This paper discusses the development of a compact associative classification model using a hill-climbing approach and fuzzy sets. The proposed methodology builds the rule-base by selecting rules which contribute towards increasing training accuracy, thus balancing classification accuracy with the number of classification association rules. The results indicated that the proposed associative classification model can achieve competitive accuracies on benchmark datasets with continuous attributes and lend better interpretability, when compared with other rule-based systems.

The determination of methane resources from liquidated coal mines

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Trenczek, Stanisław

2017-11-01

The article refers to methane presented in hard coal seams, which may pose a serious risk to workers, as evidenced by examples of incidents, and may also be a high energy source. That second issue concerns the possibility of obtaining methane from liquidated coal mines. There is discussed the current methodology for determination of methane resources from hard coal deposits. Methods of assessing methane emissions from hard coal deposits are given, including the degree of rock mass fracture, which is affected and not affected by mining. Additional criteria for methane recovery from the methane deposit are discussed by one example (of many types) of methane power generation equipment in the context of the estimation of potential viable resources. Finally, the concept of “methane resource exploitation from coal mine” refers to the potential for exploitation of the resource and the acquisition of methane for business purposes.

Mining biomedical images towards valuable information retrieval in biomedical and life sciences.

PubMed

Ahmed, Zeeshan; Zeeshan, Saman; Dandekar, Thomas

2016-01-01

Biomedical images are helpful sources for the scientists and practitioners in drawing significant hypotheses, exemplifying approaches and describing experimental results in published biomedical literature. In last decades, there has been an enormous increase in the amount of heterogeneous biomedical image production and publication, which results in a need for bioimaging platforms for feature extraction and analysis of text and content in biomedical images to take advantage in implementing effective information retrieval systems. In this review, we summarize technologies related to data mining of figures. We describe and compare the potential of different approaches in terms of their developmental aspects, used methodologies, produced results, achieved accuracies and limitations. Our comparative conclusions include current challenges for bioimaging software with selective image mining, embedded text extraction and processing of complex natural language queries. © The Author(s) 2016. Published by Oxford University Press.

Knowledge Discovery in Medical Mining by using Genetic Algorithms and Artificial Neural Networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Srivathsa, P. K.

2011-12-01

Medical Data mining could be thought of as the search for relationships and patterns within the medical data, which facilitates the acquisition of useful knowledge for effective medical diagnosis. Consequently, the predictability of disease will become more effective and the early detection of disease certainly facilitates an increased exposure to required patient care with focused treatment, economic feasibility and improved cure rates. So, the present investigation is carried on medical data(PIMA) using DM and GA based Neural Network technique and the results predict that the methodology is not only reliable but also helps in furthering the scope of the subject.

Real-time diesel particulate monitor for underground mines.

PubMed

Noll, James; Janisko, Samuel; Mischler, Steven E

The standard method for determining diesel particulate matter (DPM) exposures in underground metal/ nonmetal mines provides the average exposure concentration for an entire working shift, and several weeks might pass before results are obtained. The main problem with this approach is that it only indicates that an overexposure has occurred rather than providing the ability to prevent an overexposure or detect its cause. Conversely, real-time measurement would provide miners with timely information to allow engineering controls to be deployed immediately and to identify the major factors contributing to any overexposures. Toward this purpose, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) developed a laser extinction method to measure real-time elemental carbon (EC) concentrations (EC is a DPM surrogate). To employ this method, NIOSH developed a person-wearable instrument that was commercialized in 2011. This paper evaluates this commercial instrument, including the calibration curve, limit of detection, accuracy, and potential interferences. The instrument was found to meet the NIOSH accuracy criteria and to be capable of measuring DPM concentrations at levels observed in underground mines. In addition, it was found that a submicron size selector was necessary to avoid interference from mine dust and that cigarette smoke can be an interference when sampling in enclosed cabs.

Processing precious metals in a top-blown rotary converter

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Whellock, John G.; Matousek, Jan W.

1990-09-01

Copper-nickel/platinum-palladium flotation concentrates produced by the Stillwater Mining Company were smelted and refined in an integrated pilot plant consisting of a submerged-arc electric furnace and top-blown rotary converter. The conversion of high-iron electric furnace mattes was achieved with apparent oxygen efficiencies in excess of 100 percent. Platinum and palladium recoveries averaged 99 percent, and copper and nickel recoveries were 94 percent.

Heavy metal concentrations in growth bands of corals: a record of mine tailings input through time (Marinduque Island, Philippines).

PubMed

David, C P

2003-02-01

The impact of copper mining along the western coast of Marinduque Island was investigated. Historic input of mine tailings in the coastal region was traced through variations in heavy metal concentrations in Porites growth bands. Five samples were collected from three reefs showing different modes and extent of exposure to mine tailings. Baseline metal concentrations in Porites were established using a coral from a reef that is least exposed to contamination. The lowest mean values of Cu (0.7 microg/g), Mn (0.8 microg/g), and Zn (1.0 microg/g) were calculated from annual skeletal bands representing five years of growth. Conversely, a sample from a reef adjacent to an old tailings stockpile displayed consistently elevated metal values in its growth bands. Mean Cu, Mn, and Zn values for this coral are 3.1, 1.0 and 1.8 microg/g, respectively. Corals from the Ihatub reef showed a distinct metal concentration peak in their 1996 growth ring. These peaks coincide with a documented release of mine tailings in the Ihatub area during that year. Other metal peaks observed in coral samples correlate with years of high precipitation which may have resulted in increased sediment transport in the region. The metals are presumed to be mostly bound to the aragonite lattice of the coral skeleton, however, contribution from incorporated detrital materials to the observed metal signal (mainly of Fe) could not be easily discounted.

Application-Specific Graph Sampling for Frequent Subgraph Mining and Community Detection

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Purohit, Sumit; Choudhury, Sutanay; Holder, Lawrence B.

Graph mining is an important data analysis methodology, but struggles as the input graph size increases. The scalability and usability challenges posed by such large graphs make it imperative to sample the input graph and reduce its size. The critical challenge in sampling is to identify the appropriate algorithm to insure the resulting analysis does not suffer heavily from the data reduction. Predicting the expected performance degradation for a given graph and sampling algorithm is also useful. In this paper, we present different sampling approaches for graph mining applications such as Frequent Subgrpah Mining (FSM), and Community Detection (CD). Wemore » explore graph metrics such as PageRank, Triangles, and Diversity to sample a graph and conclude that for heterogeneous graphs Triangles and Diversity perform better than degree based metrics. We also present two new sampling variations for targeted graph mining applications. We present empirical results to show that knowledge of the target application, along with input graph properties can be used to select the best sampling algorithm. We also conclude that performance degradation is an abrupt, rather than gradual phenomena, as the sample size decreases. We present the empirical results to show that the performance degradation follows a logistic function.« less

A novel water quality data analysis framework based on time-series data mining.

PubMed

Deng, Weihui; Wang, Guoyin

2017-07-01

The rapid development of time-series data mining provides an emerging method for water resource management research. In this paper, based on the time-series data mining methodology, we propose a novel and general analysis framework for water quality time-series data. It consists of two parts: implementation components and common tasks of time-series data mining in water quality data. In the first part, we propose to granulate the time series into several two-dimensional normal clouds and calculate the similarities in the granulated level. On the basis of the similarity matrix, the similarity search, anomaly detection, and pattern discovery tasks in the water quality time-series instance dataset can be easily implemented in the second part. We present a case study of this analysis framework on weekly Dissolve Oxygen time-series data collected from five monitoring stations on the upper reaches of Yangtze River, China. It discovered the relationship of water quality in the mainstream and tributary as well as the main changing patterns of DO. The experimental results show that the proposed analysis framework is a feasible and efficient method to mine the hidden and valuable knowledge from water quality historical time-series data. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Surface water monitoring in the mercury mining district of Asturias (Spain).

PubMed

Loredo, Jorge; Petit-Domínguez, María Dolores; Ordóñez, Almudena; Galán, María Pilar; Fernández-Martínez, Rodolfo; Alvarez, Rodrigo; Rucandio, María Isabel

2010-04-15

Systematic monitoring of surface waters in the area of abandoned mine sites constitutes an essential step in the characterisation of pollution from historic mine sites. The analytical data collected throughout a hydrologic period can be used for hydrological modelling and also to select appropriate preventive and/or corrective measures in order to avoid pollution of watercourses. Caudal River drains the main abandoned Hg mine sites (located in Mieres and Pola de Lena districts) in Central Asturias (NW Spain). This paper describes a systematic monitoring of physical and chemical parameters in eighteen selected sampling points within the Caudal River catchment. At each sampling station, water flow, pH, specific conductance, dissolved oxygen, salinity, temperature, redox potential and turbidity were controlled "in situ" and major and trace elements were analysed in the laboratory. In the Hg-mineralised areas, As is present in the form of As-rich pyrite, realgar and occasionally arsenopyrite. Mine drainage and leachates from spoil heaps exhibit in some cases acidic conditions and high As contents, and they are incorporated to Caudal River tributaries. Multivariate statistical analysis aids to the interpretation of the spatial and temporary variations found in the sampled areas, as part of a methodology applicable to different environmental and geological studies. 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The relationship between various exposure metrics for elongate mineral particles (EMP) in the taconite mining and processing industry.

PubMed

Hwang, Jooyeon; Ramachandran, Gurumurthy; Raynor, Peter C; Alexander, Bruce H; Mandel, Jeffrey H

2014-01-01

Different dimensions of elongate mineral particles (EMP) have been proposed as being relevant to respiratory health end-points such as mesothelioma and lung cancer. In this article, a methodology for converting personal EMP exposures measured using the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) 7400/7402 methods to exposures based on other size-based definitions has been proposed and illustrated. Area monitoring for EMP in the taconite mines in Minnesota's Mesabi Iron Range was conducted using a Micro Orifice Uniform Deposit Impactor (MOUDI) size-fractionating sampler. EMP on stages of the MOUDI were counted and sized according to each EMP definition using an indirect-transfer transmission electron microscopy (ISO Method 13794). EMP were identified using energy-dispersive x-ray and electron diffraction analysis. Conversion factors between the EMP counts based on different definitions were estimated using (1) a linear regression model across all locations and (2) a location-specific ratio of the count based on each EMP definition to the NIOSH 7400/7402 count. The highest fractions of EMP concentrations were found for EMP that were 1-3 μm in length and 0.2-0.5 μm in width. Therefore, the current standard NIOSH Method 7400, which only counts EMP >5 μm in length and ≥ 3 in aspect ratio, may underestimate amphibole EMP exposures. At the same time, there was a high degree of correlation between the exposures estimated according to the different size-based metrics. Therefore, the various dimensional definitions probably do not result in different dose-response relationships in epidemiological analyses. Given the high degree of correlation between the various metrics, a result consistent with prior research, a more reasonable metric might be the measurement of all EMP irrespective of size. [Supplementary materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene for the following free supplemental resource: figures detailing EMP concentration.].

¡VAMOS! (Viable Alternative Mine Operating System) - a 'Horizon 2020' project

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sword, Cameron; Bodo, Balazs; Kapusniak, Stef; Bosman, Frank; Rainbird, Jenny; Silva, Eduardo

2017-04-01

The 42-month ¡VAMOS! project (Viable Alternative Mine Operating System, Grant Agreement 642477, www.vamos-project.eu), funded by the EC H2020 Programme, will enable access to high-grade EU reserves of mineral ore-bodies by developing an innovative clean and low visibility mining technique. The project will demonstrate the technological and economic viability of the underwater extraction of metallic mineral deposits which are currently technologically, economically, and environmentally unobtainable. In doing so, ¡VAMOS! hopes to encourage investment in abandoned open-pit mines and prospective mines, helping to put the EU back on a level playing field with the rest of the world in terms of access to strategically important minerals. The ¡VAMOS! concept is defined by a remotely-operated underwater mining vehicle, adapted and improved from existing subsea mining technology. Operating in tandem with an HROV, the mining vehicle will connect to a flexible riser through which slurried mined material will be pumped from the mudline to onshore dewatering facilities via a floating mobile deployment-module, on which will be fitted a bypass system linked to an LIBS, allowing real-time grade-control. Analysis of European and national regulation and stakeholder assessments found there is significant support for developing the technology among local communities and governments. An initial environmental assessment of the potential impact of the innovative mining operation concluded the project has a smaller environmental footprint than conventional mining operations: this is due to factors including the quieter operation and absence of blasting, zero water-table flux, and the higher stripping ratio enabled by higher fluid pressure acting on the sidewalls of the mine. The prototypes are currently in their construction phase following a final design freeze in October 2016. Work is now underway on the foresight visioning, economic evaluation and policy guidelines for the ¡VAMOS! methodology and technologies; the project team will be identifying key areas of research interest and assessing the micro and macroeconomic impact of ¡VAMOS!. The deadline for the completion of the underwater mining vehicle prototype is May 2017, and the HROV hardware and software is to be completed by July 2017. Site-tests will take place in the months after the build completion at a number of unique abandoned mines across Europe, with final proof of operational viability due by November 2017.

Distribution of Cu, Co, As, and Fe in mine waste, sediment, soil, and water in and around mineral deposits and mines of the Idaho Cobalt Belt, USA

USGS Publications Warehouse

Gray, John E.; Eppinger, Robert G.

2012-01-01

The distribution of Cu, Co, As and Fe was studied downstream from mines and deposits in the Idaho Cobalt Belt (ICB), the largest Co resource in the USA. To evaluate potential contamination in ecosystems in the ICB, mine waste, stream sediment, soil, and water were collected and analyzed for Cu, Co, As and Fe in this area. Concentrations of Cu in mine waste and stream sediment collected proximal to mines in the ICB ranged from 390 to 19,000 μg/g, exceeding the USEPA target clean-up level and the probable effect concentration (PEC) for Cu of 149 μg/g in sediment; PEC is the concentration above which harmful effects are likely in sediment dwelling organisms. In addition concentrations of Cu in mine runoff and stream water collected proximal to mines were highly elevated in the ICB and exceeded the USEPA chronic criterion for aquatic organisms of 6.3 μg/L (at a water hardness of 50 mg/L) and an LC50 concentration for rainbow trout of 14 μg/L for Cu in water. Concentrations of Co in mine waste and stream sediment collected proximal to mines varied from 14 to 7400 μg/g and were highly elevated above regional background concentrations, and generally exceeded the USEPA target clean-up level of 80 μg/g for Co in sediment. Concentrations of Co in water were as high as in 75,000 μg/L in the ICB, exceeding an LC50 of 346 μg/L for rainbow trout for Co in water by as much as two orders of magnitude, likely indicating an adverse effect on trout. Mine waste and stream sediment collected in the ICB also contained highly elevated As concentrations that varied from 26 to 17,000 μg/g, most of which exceeded the PEC of 33 μg/g and the USEPA target clean-up level of 35 μg/g for As in sediment. Conversely, most water samples had As concentrations that were below the 150 μg/L chronic criterion for protection of aquatic organisms and the USEPA target clean-up level of 14 μg/L. There is abundant Fe oxide in streams in the ICB and several samples of mine runoff and stream water exceeded the chronic criterion for protection of aquatic organisms of 1000 μg/L for Fe. There has been extensive remediation of mined areas in the ICB, but because some mine waste remaining in the area contains highly elevated Cu, Co, As and Fe, inhalation or ingestion of mine waste particulates may lead to human exposure to these elements.

Intergenerational equity and conservation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Otoole, R. P.; Walton, A. L.

1980-01-01

The issue of integenerational equity in the use of natural resources is discussed in the context of coal mining conversion. An attempt to determine if there is a clear-cut benefit to future generations in setting minimum coal extraction efficiency standards in mining is made. It is demonstrated that preserving fossil fuels beyond the economically efficient level is not necessarily beneficial to future generations even in terms of their own preferences. Setting fossil fuel conservation targets for intermediate products (i.e. energy) may increase the quantities of fossil fuels available to future generations and hence lower the costs, but there may be serious disadvantages to future generations as well. The use of relatively inexpensive fossil fuels in this generation may result in more infrastructure development and more knowledge production available to future generations. The value of fossil fuels versus these other endowments in the future depends on many factors which cannot possibly be evaluated at present. Since there is no idea of whether future generations are being helped or harmed, it is recommended that integenerational equity not be used as a factor in setting coal mine extraction efficiency standards, or in establishing requirements.

A critical methodological review of discourse and conversation analysis studies of family therapy.

PubMed

Tseliou, Eleftheria

2013-12-01

Discourse (DA) and conversation (CA) analysis, two qualitative research methods, have been recently suggested as potentially promising for the study of family therapy due to common epistemological adherences and their potential for an in situ study of therapeutic dialog. However, to date, there is no systematic methodological review of the few existing DA and CA studies of family therapy. This study aims at addressing this lack by critically reviewing published DA and CA studies of family therapy on methodological grounds. Twenty-eight articles in total are reviewed in relation to certain methodological axes identified in the relevant literature. These include choice of method, framing of research question(s), data/sampling, type of analysis, epistemological perspective, content/type of knowledge claims, and attendance to criteria for good quality practice. It is argued that the reviewed studies show "glimpses" of the methods' potential for family therapy research despite the identification of certain "shortcomings" regarding their methodological rigor. These include unclearly framed research questions and the predominance of case study designs. They also include inconsistencies between choice of method, stated or unstated epistemological orientations and knowledge claims, and limited attendance to criteria for good quality practice. In conclusion, it is argued that DA and CA can add to the existing quantitative and qualitative methods for family therapy research. They can both offer unique ways for a detailed study of the actual therapeutic dialog, provided that future attempts strive for a methodologically rigorous practice and against their uncritical deployment. © FPI, Inc.

What the papers say: Text mining for genomics and systems biology

PubMed Central

2010-01-01

Keeping up with the rapidly growing literature has become virtually impossible for most scientists. This can have dire consequences. First, we may waste research time and resources on reinventing the wheel simply because we can no longer maintain a reliable grasp on the published literature. Second, and perhaps more detrimental, judicious (or serendipitous) combination of knowledge from different scientific disciplines, which would require following disparate and distinct research literatures, is rapidly becoming impossible for even the most ardent readers of research publications. Text mining -- the automated extraction of information from (electronically) published sources -- could potentially fulfil an important role -- but only if we know how to harness its strengths and overcome its weaknesses. As we do not expect that the rate at which scientific results are published will decrease, text mining tools are now becoming essential in order to cope with, and derive maximum benefit from, this information explosion. In genomics, this is particularly pressing as more and more rare disease-causing variants are found and need to be understood. Not being conversant with this technology may put scientists and biomedical regulators at a severe disadvantage. In this review, we introduce the basic concepts underlying modern text mining and its applications in genomics and systems biology. We hope that this review will serve three purposes: (i) to provide a timely and useful overview of the current status of this field, including a survey of present challenges; (ii) to enable researchers to decide how and when to apply text mining tools in their own research; and (iii) to highlight how the research communities in genomics and systems biology can help to make text mining from biomedical abstracts and texts more straightforward. PMID:21106487

Evidence-Based Practice Empowers Practitioners: A Response to Epstein

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rubin, Allen

2015-01-01

Epstein makes a strong argument for the value of clinical data mining (CDM), although he minimizes some of the potential limitations in that methodology, such as attrition. Epstein's portrayal of evidence-based practice (EBP) as practitioner-bashing and treasuring intervention manuals overlooks the emphasis in the EBP process on the need for…

Three Interaction Patterns on Asynchronous Online Discussion Behaviours: A Methodological Comparison

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jo, I.; Park, Y.; Lee, H.

2017-01-01

An asynchronous online discussion (AOD) is one format of instructional methods that facilitate student-centered learning. In the wealth of AOD research, this study evaluated how students' behavior on AOD influences their academic outcomes. This case study compared the differential analytic methods including web log mining, social network analysis…

On Instructional Utility, Statistical Methodology, and the Added Value of ECD: Lessons Learned from the Special Issue

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nelson, Brian; Nugent, Rebecca; Rupp, Andre A.

2012-01-01

This special issue of "JEDM" was dedicated to bridging work done in the disciplines of "educational and psychological assessment" and "educational data mining" (EDM) via the assessment design and implementation framework of "evidence-centered design" (ECD). It consisted of a series of five papers: one…

Using Cluster Analysis for Data Mining in Educational Technology Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Antonenko, Pavlo D.; Toy, Serkan; Niederhauser, Dale S.

2012-01-01

Cluster analysis is a group of statistical methods that has great potential for analyzing the vast amounts of web server-log data to understand student learning from hyperlinked information resources. In this methodological paper we provide an introduction to cluster analysis for educational technology researchers and illustrate its use through…

75 FR 1655 - Proposed Information Collection Request Submitted for Public Comment and Recommendations...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-01-12

... provide a safe environment for miners. Methane is liberated from the strata, and noxious gases and dusts from blasting and other mining activities may be present. The explosive and noxious gases and dusts... collection of information, including the validity of the methodology and assumptions used; Enhance the...

Web Usage Mining Analysis of Federated Search Tools for Egyptian Scholars

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mohamed, Khaled A.; Hassan, Ahmed

2008-01-01

Purpose: This paper aims to examine the behaviour of the Egyptian scholars while accessing electronic resources through two federated search tools. The main purpose of this article is to provide guidance for federated search tool technicians and support teams about user issues, including the need for training. Design/methodology/approach: Log…

Propensity Score Estimation with Data Mining Techniques: Alternatives to Logistic Regression

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Keller, Bryan S. B.; Kim, Jee-Seon; Steiner, Peter M.

2013-01-01

Propensity score analysis (PSA) is a methodological technique which may correct for selection bias in a quasi-experiment by modeling the selection process using observed covariates. Because logistic regression is well understood by researchers in a variety of fields and easy to implement in a number of popular software packages, it has…

Application of Response Surface Methodology on Leaching of Iron from Partially Laterised Khondalite Rocks: A Bauxite Mining Waste

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Swain, Ranjita; Bhima Rao, R.

2018-04-01

In the present investigation, response surface methodology (RSM) is used for a quadratic model that continuously controls the process parameters. This model is used to optimize the removal of iron oxide from Partially Laterised Khondalite (PLK) rocks which is influenced by several independent variables namely acid concentration, time and temperature. Second order response functions are produced for leaching of iron oxide from PLK rocks-a bauxite mining waste. In RSM, Box-Behnken design is used for the process optimization to achieve maximum removal of iron oxide. The influence of the process variables of leaching of iron oxide is presented in the form of 3-D response graphs. The results of this investigation reveals that 3 M hydrochloric acid concentration, 240 min time and 373 K temperature are found to be the best conditions for removal of 99% Fe2O3. The product obtain at this condition contain 80% brightness which is suitable for ceramic and filler industry applications. The novelity of the work is that the waste can be a value added product after suitable physical beneficiation and chemical treatment.

Feature Mining and Health Assessment for Gearboxes Using Run-Up/Coast-Down Signals

PubMed Central

Zhao, Ming; Lin, Jing; Miao, Yonghao; Xu, Xiaoqiang

2016-01-01

Vibration signals measured in the run-up/coast-down (R/C) processes usually carry rich information about the health status of machinery. However, a major challenge in R/C signals analysis lies in how to exploit more diagnostic information, and how this information could be properly integrated to achieve a more reliable maintenance decision. Aiming at this problem, a framework of R/C signals analysis is presented for the health assessment of gearbox. In the proposed methodology, we first investigate the data preprocessing and feature selection issues for R/C signals. Based on that, a sparsity-guided feature enhancement scheme is then proposed to extract the weak phase jitter associated with gear defect. In order for an effective feature mining and integration under R/C, a generalized phase demodulation technique is further established to reveal the evolution of modulation feature with operating speed and rotation angle. The experimental results indicate that the proposed methodology could not only detect the presence of gear damage, but also offer a novel insight into the dynamic behavior of gearbox. PMID:27827831

Feature Mining and Health Assessment for Gearboxes Using Run-Up/Coast-Down Signals.

PubMed

Zhao, Ming; Lin, Jing; Miao, Yonghao; Xu, Xiaoqiang

2016-11-02

Vibration signals measured in the run-up/coast-down (R/C) processes usually carry rich information about the health status of machinery. However, a major challenge in R/C signals analysis lies in how to exploit more diagnostic information, and how this information could be properly integrated to achieve a more reliable maintenance decision. Aiming at this problem, a framework of R/C signals analysis is presented for the health assessment of gearbox. In the proposed methodology, we first investigate the data preprocessing and feature selection issues for R/C signals. Based on that, a sparsity-guided feature enhancement scheme is then proposed to extract the weak phase jitter associated with gear defect. In order for an effective feature mining and integration under R/C, a generalized phase demodulation technique is further established to reveal the evolution of modulation feature with operating speed and rotation angle. The experimental results indicate that the proposed methodology could not only detect the presence of gear damage, but also offer a novel insight into the dynamic behavior of gearbox.

De Novo Peptide Sequencing: Deep Mining of High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry Data.

PubMed

Islam, Mohammad Tawhidul; Mohamedali, Abidali; Fernandes, Criselda Santan; Baker, Mark S; Ranganathan, Shoba

2017-01-01

High resolution mass spectrometry has revolutionized proteomics over the past decade, resulting in tremendous amounts of data in the form of mass spectra, being generated in a relatively short span of time. The mining of this spectral data for analysis and interpretation though has lagged behind such that potentially valuable data is being overlooked because it does not fit into the mold of traditional database searching methodologies. Although the analysis of spectra by de novo sequences removes such biases and has been available for a long period of time, its uptake has been slow or almost nonexistent within the scientific community. In this chapter, we propose a methodology to integrate de novo peptide sequencing using three commonly available software solutions in tandem, complemented by homology searching, and manual validation of spectra. This simplified method would allow greater use of de novo sequencing approaches and potentially greatly increase proteome coverage leading to the unearthing of valuable insights into protein biology, especially of organisms whose genomes have been recently sequenced or are poorly annotated.

Something in the Way We Move: Motion Dynamics, Not Perceived Sex, Influence Head Movements in Conversation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Boker, Steven M.; Cohn, Jeffrey F.; Theobald, Barry-John; Matthews, Iain; Mangini, Michael; Spies, Jeffrey R.; Ambadar, Zara; Brick, Timothy R.

2011-01-01

During conversation, women tend to nod their heads more frequently and more vigorously than men. An individual speaking with a woman tends to nod his or her head more than when speaking with a man. Is this due to social expectation or due to coupled motion dynamics between the speakers? We present a novel methodology that allows us to randomly…

Optimization of lipase-catalyzed biodiesel by isopropanolysis in a continuous packed-bed reactor using response surface methodology.

PubMed

Chang, Cheng; Chen, Jiann-Hwa; Chang, Chieh-Ming J; Wu, Tsung-Ta; Shieh, Chwen-Jen

2009-10-31

Isopropanolysis reactions were performed using triglycerides with immobilized lipase in a solvent-free environment. This study modeled the degree of isopropanolysis of soybean oil in a continuous packed-bed reactor when Novozym 435 was used as the biocatalyst. Response surface methodology (RSM) and three-level-three-factor Box-Behnken design were employed to evaluate the effects of synthesis parameters, reaction temperature ( degrees C), flow rate (mL/min) and substrate molar ratio of isopropanol to soybean oil, on the percentage molar conversion of biodiesel by transesterification. The results show that flow rate and temperature have a significant effect on the percentage of molar conversion. On the basis of ridge max analysis, the optimum conditions for synthesis were as follows: flow rate 0.1 mL/min, temperature 51.5 degrees C and substrate molar ratio 1:4.14. The predicted value was 76.62+/-1.52% and actual experimental value was 75.62+/-0.81% molar conversion. Moreover, continuous enzymatic process for seven days did not show any appreciable decrease in the percent of molar conversion (75%). This work demonstrates the applicability of lipase catalysis to prepare isopropyl esters by transesterification in solvent-free system with a continuous packed-bed reactor for industrial production.

Making meaning in qualitative research with conversational partnerships: a methodological discussion.

PubMed

Hunter Revell, Susan M

2013-01-01

Rubin and Rubin's responsive interviewing method is based on the conversational partnership formed between researcher and participant. This method allows the researcher to understand experiences through the participant's words and stories to create meaning. In this article, the reader is guided through a 3-part interview series with a person living with traumatic spinal cord injury. The example focuses on how interview guides were developed and tailored to the participant, and how field notations were created. Findings include the importance of establishing trust and rapport in conversational partnerships for meaning making to occur.

Advances in graphene-based semiconductor photocatalysts for solar energy conversion: fundamentals and materials engineering.

PubMed

Xie, Xiuqiang; Kretschmer, Katja; Wang, Guoxiu

2015-08-28

Graphene-based semiconductor photocatalysis has been regarded as a promising technology for solar energy storage and conversion. In this review, we summarized recent developments of graphene-based photocatalysts, including preparation of graphene-based photocatalysts, typical key advances in the understanding of graphene functions for photocatalytic activity enhancement and methodologies to regulate the electron transfer efficiency in graphene-based composite photocatalysts, by which we hope to offer enriched information to harvest the utmost fascinating properties of graphene as a platform to construct efficient graphene-based composite photocatalysts for solar-to-energy conversion.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Burger, James A

Concentrations of CO{sub 2} in the Earth’s atmosphere have increased dramatically in the past 100 years due to deforestation, land use change, and fossil fuel combustion. These humancaused, higher levels of CO{sub 2} may enhance the atmospheric greenhouse effect and may contribute to climate change. Many reclaimed coal-surface mine areas in the eastern U.S. are not in productive use. Reforestation of these lands could provide societal benefits, including sequestration of atmospheric carbon. The goal of this project was to determine the biological and economic feasibility of restoring high-quality forests on the tens of thousands of hectares of mined land andmore » to measure carbon sequestration and wood production benefits that would be achieved from large-scale application of forest restoration procedures. We developed a mine soil quality model that can be used to estimate the suitability of selected mined sites for carbon sequestration projects. Across the mine soil quality gradient, we tested survival and growth performance of three species assemblages under three levels of silvicultural. Hardwood species survived well in WV and VA, and survived better than the other species used in OH, while white pine had the poorest survival of all species at all sites. Survival was particularly good for the site-specific hardwoods planted at each site. Weed control plus tillage may be the optimum treatment for hardwoods and white pine, as any increased growth resulting from fertilization may not offset the decreased survival that accompanied fertilization. Grassland to forest conversion costs may be a major contributor to the lack of reforestation of previously reclaimed mine lands in the Appalachian coal-mining region. Otherwise profitable forestry opportunities may be precluded by these conversion costs, which for many combinations of factors (site class, forest type, timber prices, regeneration intensity, and interest rate) result in negative land expectation values. Improved technology and/or knowledge of reforestation practices in these situations may provide opportunities to reduce the costs of converting many of these sites as research continues into these practices. It also appears that in many cases substantial payments, non-revenue values, or carbon values are required to reach “profitability” under the present circumstances. It is unclear when, or in what form, markets will develop to support any of these add-on values to supplement commercial forestry revenues. However, as these markets do develop, they will only enhance the viability of forestry on reclaimed mined lands, although as we demonstrate in our analysis of carbon payments, the form of the revenue source may itself influence management, potentially mitigating some of the benefits of reforestation. For a representative mined-land resource base, reforestation of mined lands with mixed pine-hardwood species would result in an average estimated C accumulation in forms that can be harvested for use as wood products or are likely to remain in the soil C pool at ~250 Mg C ha{sup -1} over a 60 year period following reforestation. The “additionality” of this potential C sequestration was estimated considering data in scientific literature that defines C accumulation in mined-land grasslands over the long term. Given assumptions detailed in the text, these lands have the potential to sequester ~180 Mg C ha{sup -1}, a total of 53.5 x 10{sup 6} Mg C, over 60 years, an average of ~900,000 Mg C / yr, an amount equivalent to about 0.04% of projected US C emissions at the midpoint of a 60-year period (circa 2040) following assumed reforestation. Although potential sequestration quantities are not great relative to potential national needs should an energy-related C emissions offset requirement be developed at some future date, these lands are available and unused for other economically valued purposes and many possess soil and site properties that are well-suited to reforestation. Should such reforestation occur, it would also produce ancillary benefits by providing environmental services, such as enhanced watershed protection, and producing timber and renewable-fuel products.« less

Direct liquefaction proof-of-concept program. Finaltopical report, Bench Run 4 (227-95)

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Comolli, A.G.; Pradhan, V.R.; Lee, T.L.K.

This report presents the results of bench-scale work, Bench Run PB-04, conducted under the DOE Proof of Concept-Bench Option Program in direct coal liquefaction at Hydrocarbon Technologies, Inc. in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. The Bench Run PB-04 was the fifth of the nine runs planned in the POC Bench Option Contract between the U.S. DOE and Hydrocarbon Technologies, Inc. Bench Run PB-04 had multiple goals. These included the evaluation of the effects of dispersed slurry catalyst system on the performance of direct liquefaction of a subbituminous Wyoming Black Thunder mine coal under extinction recycle (454{degrees}C+ recycle) condition; another goal was tomore » investigate the effects of the combined processing of automobile shredder residue (auto-fluff) with coal and other organic waste materials. PB-04 employed a two-stage, back-mixed, slurry reactor system with an interstage V/L separator and an in-line fixed-bed hydrotreater. The HTI`s newly modified P/Fe catalyst was very effective for direct liquefaction and coprocessing of Black Thunder mine subbituminous coal with Hondo resid and auto-fluff; during `coal-only` liquefaction mode, over 93% maf coal conversion was obtained with about 90% residuum conversion and as high as 67% light distillate (C{sub 4}-975 F) yield, while during `coprocessing` mode of operation, distillate yields varied between 58 and 69%; the residuum conversions varied between 74 and 89% maf. Overall, it is concluded, based upon the yield data available from PB-04, that auto-effective as MSW plastics in improving coal hydroconversion process performance. Auto-fluff did not increase light distillate yields nor decrease light gas make and chemical hydrogen consumption in coal liquefaction, as was observed to occur with MSW plastics.« less

Weighted Association Rule Mining for Item Groups with Different Properties and Risk Assessment for Networked Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kim, Jungja; Ceong, Heetaek; Won, Yonggwan

In market-basket analysis, weighted association rule (WAR) discovery can mine the rules that include more beneficial information by reflecting item importance for special products. In the point-of-sale database, each transaction is composed of items with similar properties, and item weights are pre-defined and fixed by a factor such as the profit. However, when items are divided into more than one group and the item importance must be measured independently for each group, traditional weighted association rule discovery cannot be used. To solve this problem, we propose a new weighted association rule mining methodology. The items should be first divided into subgroups according to their properties, and the item importance, i.e. item weight, is defined or calculated only with the items included in the subgroup. Then, transaction weight is measured by appropriately summing the item weights from each subgroup, and the weighted support is computed as the fraction of the transaction weights that contains the candidate items relative to the weight of all transactions. As an example, our proposed methodology is applied to assess the vulnerability to threats of computer systems that provide networked services. Our algorithm provides both quantitative risk-level values and qualitative risk rules for the security assessment of networked computer systems using WAR discovery. Also, it can be widely used for new applications with many data sets in which the data items are distinctly separated.

Applying data mining techniques to determine important parameters in chronic kidney disease and the relations of these parameters to each other.

PubMed

Tahmasebian, Shahram; Ghazisaeedi, Marjan; Langarizadeh, Mostafa; Mokhtaran, Mehrshad; Mahdavi-Mazdeh, Mitra; Javadian, Parisa

2017-01-01

Introduction: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) includes a wide range of pathophysiological processes which will be observed along with abnormal function of kidneys and progressive decrease in glomerular filtration rate (GFR). According to the definition decreasing GFR must have been present for at least three months. CKD will eventually result in end-stage kidney disease. In this process different factors play role and finding the relations between effective parameters in this regard can help to prevent or slow progression of this disease. There are always a lot of data being collected from the patients' medical records. This huge array of data can be considered a valuable source for analyzing, exploring and discovering information. Objectives: Using the data mining techniques, the present study tries to specify the effective parameters and also aims to determine their relations with each other in Iranian patients with CKD. Material and Methods: The study population includes 31996 patients with CKD. First, all of the data is registered in the database. Then data mining tools were used to find the hidden rules and relationships between parameters in collected data. Results: After data cleaning based on CRISP-DM (Cross Industry Standard Process for Data Mining) methodology and running mining algorithms on the data in the database the relationships between the effective parameters was specified. Conclusion: This study was done using the data mining method pertaining to the effective factors on patients with CKD.

Applying data mining techniques to determine important parameters in chronic kidney disease and the relations of these parameters to each other

PubMed Central

Tahmasebian, Shahram; Ghazisaeedi, Marjan; Langarizadeh, Mostafa; Mokhtaran, Mehrshad; Mahdavi-Mazdeh, Mitra; Javadian, Parisa

2017-01-01

Introduction: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) includes a wide range of pathophysiological processes which will be observed along with abnormal function of kidneys and progressive decrease in glomerular filtration rate (GFR). According to the definition decreasing GFR must have been present for at least three months. CKD will eventually result in end-stage kidney disease. In this process different factors play role and finding the relations between effective parameters in this regard can help to prevent or slow progression of this disease. There are always a lot of data being collected from the patients’ medical records. This huge array of data can be considered a valuable source for analyzing, exploring and discovering information. Objectives: Using the data mining techniques, the present study tries to specify the effective parameters and also aims to determine their relations with each other in Iranian patients with CKD. Material and Methods: The study population includes 31996 patients with CKD. First, all of the data is registered in the database. Then data mining tools were used to find the hidden rules and relationships between parameters in collected data. Results: After data cleaning based on CRISP-DM (Cross Industry Standard Process for Data Mining) methodology and running mining algorithms on the data in the database the relationships between the effective parameters was specified. Conclusion: This study was done using the data mining method pertaining to the effective factors on patients with CKD. PMID:28497080

The U.S. Energy Dilemma: The Gap between Today’s Requirements and Tomorrow’s Potential.

DTIC Science & Technology

1973-07-01

Possible Solutions . ........ .. 142 Use of Low-Sulfur Coal ................ 43 Flue - Gas Desulfurization ................ 43 Coal Cleaning...1) use of low-sulfur coal, (2) flue - gas desulfurization , (3) coal cleaning, (4) coal refining, and (5) coal conversion. Use of Low-Sulfur Coal The...to the same point (Skillings Mining Rev., 1973). Flue - Gas Desulfurization With standards based on sulfur dioxide emissions per million Btu, rather than

Molecular Breeding Algae For Improved Traits For The Conversion Of Waste To Fuels And Commodities.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bagwell, C.

This Exploratory LDRD aimed to develop molecular breeding methodology for biofuel algal strain improvement for applications in waste to energy / commodity conversion technologies. Genome shuffling technologies, specifically protoplast fusion, are readily available for the rapid production of genetic hybrids for trait improvement and have been used successfully in bacteria, yeast, plants and animals. However, genome fusion has not been developed for exploiting the remarkable untapped potential of eukaryotic microalgae for large scale integrated bio-conversion and upgrading of waste components to valued commodities, fuel and energy. The proposed molecular breeding technology is effectively sexual reproduction in algae; though compared tomore » traditional breeding, the molecular route is rapid, high-throughput and permits selection / improvement of complex traits which cannot be accomplished by traditional genetics. Genome fusion technologies are the cutting edge of applied biotechnology. The goals of this Exploratory LDRD were to 1) establish reliable methodology for protoplast production among diverse microalgal strains, and 2) demonstrate genome fusion for hybrid strain production using a single gene encoded trait as a proof of the concept.« less

A data mining approach to intelligence operations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Memon, Nasrullah; Hicks, David L.; Harkiolakis, Nicholas

2008-03-01

In this paper we examine the latest thinking, approaches and methodologies in use for finding the nuggets of information and subliminal (and perhaps intentionally hidden) patterns and associations that are critical to identify criminal activity and suspects to private and government security agencies. An emphasis in the paper is placed on Social Network Analysis and Investigative Data Mining, and the use of these technologies in the counterterrorism domain. Tools and techniques from both areas are described, along with the important tasks for which they can be used to assist with the investigation and analysis of terrorist organizations. The process of collecting data about these organizations is also considered along with the inherent difficulties that are involved.

Increasing the technical level of mining haul trucks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Voronov, Yuri; Voronov, Artyom; Grishin, Sergey; Bujankin, Alexey

2017-11-01

Theoretical and methodological fundamentals of mining haul trucks optimal design are articulated. Methods based on the systems approach to integrated assessment of truck technical level and methods for optimization of truck parameters depending on performance standards are provided. The results of using these methods are given. The developed method allows not only assessing the truck technical levels but also choosing the most promising models and providing quantitative evaluations of the decisions to be made at the design stage. These areas are closely connected with the problem of improvement in the industrial output quality, which, being a part of the widely spread in Western world "total quality control" ideology, is one of the major issues for the Russian economy.

Data mining analysis of factors influencing children's blood pressure in a nation-wide health survey

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wasiewicz, Piotr; Kulaga, Zbigniew; Litwin, Mieczyslaw

2009-06-01

Blood pressure in childhood and adolescents is important indicator of good health and strong predictor of BP in adulthood. Genetic susceptibility, environmental and socioeconomic factors are related both with life style, obesity and cardiovascular risk including elevated BP. Increased body mass index is strictly correlated with BP, and obesity and overweight is main intermediate phenotype of childhood hypertension. However, despite current obesity epidemic available data do not fully support the hypothesis that it has resulted in increase of BP in children. We analysed data obtained from 7591 children participating in nation-wide health survey using data mining methodology. Results reveal relationships of obesity and high blood pressure with school environment characteristics.

Numerical Modeling of Pot-Hole Subsidence Due to Shallow Underground Coal Mining in Structurally Disturbed Ground

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lokhande, Ritesh D.; Murthy, V. M. S. R.; Singh, K. B.; Verma, Chandan Prasad; Verma, A. K.

2018-04-01

Stability analysis of underground mining is, generally, complex in nature and is difficult to carry out through analytical solutions more so in case of pot-hole subsidence prediction. Thus, application of numerical modeling technique for simulating and finding a solution is preferred. This paper reports the development of a methodology for simulating the pot-hole subsidence using FLAC3D. This study is restricted to geologically disturbed areas where presence of fault was dominating factor for occurrence of pot-hole subsidence. The results demonstrate that the variation in the excavation geometry and properties of immediate roof rocks play a vital role in the occurrence of pot-hole subsidence.

Stress monitoring versus microseismic ruptures in an active deep mine

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tonnellier, Alice; Bouffier, Christian; Bigarré, Pascal; Nyström, Anders; Österberg, Anders; Fjellström, Peter

2015-04-01

Nowadays, underground mining industry has developed high-technology mass mining methods to optimise the productivity at deep levels. Such massive extraction induces high-level stress redistribution generating seismic events around the mining works, threatening safety and economics. For this reason mining irregular deep ore bodies calls for steadily enhanced scientific practises and technologies to guarantee the mine environment to be safer and stable for the miners and the infrastructures. INERIS, within the framework of the FP7 European project I2Mine and in partnership with the Swedish mining company Boliden, has developed new methodologies in order to monitor both quasi-static stress changes and ruptures in a seismic prone area. To this purpose, a unique local permanent microseismic and stress monitoring network has been installed into the deep-working Garpenberg mine situated to the north of Uppsala (Sweden). In this mine, ore is extracted using sublevel stoping with paste fill production/distribution system and long-hole drilling method. This monitoring network has been deployed between about 1100 and 1250 meter depth. It consists in six 1-component and five 3-component microseismic probes (14-Hz geophones) deployed in the Lappberget area, in addition to three 3D stress monitoring cells that focus on a very local exploited area. Objective is three-fold: to quantify accurately quasi-static stress changes and freshly-induced stress gradients with drift development in the orebody, to study quantitatively those stress changes versus induced detected and located microseismic ruptures, and possibly to identify quasi-static stress transfer from those seismic ruptures. Geophysical and geotechnical data are acquired continuously and automatically transferred to INERIS datacenter through the web. They are made available on a secured web cloud monitoring infrastructure called e.cenaris and completed with mine data. Such interface enables the visualisation of the monitoring data coming from the mine in quasi-real time and facilitates information exchanges and decision making for experts and stakeholders. On the basis of these data acquisition and sharing, preliminary analysis has been started to highlight whether stress variations and seismic sources behaviour might be directly bound with mine working evolution and could improve the knowledge on the equilibrium states inside the mine. Knowing such parameters indeed will be a potential solution to understand better the response of deep mining activities to the exploitation solicitations and to develop, if possible, methods to prevent from major hazards such as rock bursts and other ground failure phenomena.

Evaluation of laser cutting process with auxiliary gas pressure by soft computing approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lazov, Lyubomir; Nikolić, Vlastimir; Jovic, Srdjan; Milovančević, Miloš; Deneva, Heristina; Teirumenieka, Erika; Arsic, Nebojsa

2018-06-01

Evaluation of the optimal laser cutting parameters is very important for the high cut quality. This is highly nonlinear process with different parameters which is the main challenge in the optimization process. Data mining methodology is one of most versatile method which can be used laser cutting process optimization. Support vector regression (SVR) procedure is implemented since it is a versatile and robust technique for very nonlinear data regression. The goal in this study was to determine the optimal laser cutting parameters to ensure robust condition for minimization of average surface roughness. Three cutting parameters, the cutting speed, the laser power, and the assist gas pressure, were used in the investigation. As a laser type TruLaser 1030 technological system was used. Nitrogen as an assisted gas was used in the laser cutting process. As the data mining method, support vector regression procedure was used. Data mining prediction accuracy was very high according the coefficient (R2) of determination and root mean square error (RMSE): R2 = 0.9975 and RMSE = 0.0337. Therefore the data mining approach could be used effectively for determination of the optimal conditions of the laser cutting process.

Ultrasound-assisted extraction for total sulphur measurement in mine tailings.

PubMed

Khan, Adnan Hossain; Shang, Julie Q; Alam, Raquibul

2012-10-15

A sample preparation method for percentage recovery of total sulphur (%S) in reactive mine tailings based on ultrasound-assisted digestion (USAD) and inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES) was developed. The influence of various methodological factors was screened by employing a two-level and three-factor (2(3)) full factorial design and using KZK-1, a sericite schist certified reference material (CRM), to find the optimal combination of studied factors and %S. Factors such as the sonication time, temperature and acid combination were studied, with the best result identified as 20 min of sonication, 80°C temperature and 1 ml of HNO(3):1 ml of HCl, which can achieve 100% recovery for the selected CRM. Subsequently a fraction of the 2(3) full factorial design was applied to mine tailings. The percentage relative standard deviation (%RSD) for the ultrasound method is less than 3.0% for CRM and less than 6% for the mine tailings. The investigated method was verified by X-ray diffraction analysis. The USAD method compared favorably with existing methods such as hot plate assisted digestion method, X-ray fluorescence and LECO™-CNS method. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A review on the importance of metals and metalloids in atmospheric dust and aerosol from mining operations.

PubMed

Csavina, Janae; Field, Jason; Taylor, Mark P; Gao, Song; Landázuri, Andrea; Betterton, Eric A; Sáez, A Eduardo

2012-09-01

Contaminants can be transported rapidly and over relatively long distances by atmospheric dust and aerosol relative to other media such as water, soil and biota; yet few studies have explicitly evaluated the environmental implications of this pathway, making it a fundamental but understudied transport mechanism. Although there are numerous natural and anthropogenic activities that can increase dust and aerosol emissions and contaminant levels in the environment, mining operations are notable with respect to the quantity of particulates generated, the global extent of area impacted, and the toxicity of contaminants associated with the emissions. Here we review (i) the environmental fate and transport of metals and metalloids in dust and aerosol from mining operations, (ii) current methodologies used to assess contaminant concentrations and particulate emissions, and (iii) the potential health and environmental risks associated with airborne contaminants from mining operations. The review evaluates future research priorities based on the available literature and suggest that there is a particular need to measure and understand the generation, fate and transport of airborne particulates from mining operations, specifically the finer particle fraction. More generally, our findings suggest that mining operations play an important but underappreciated role in the generation of contaminated atmospheric dust and aerosol and the transport of metal and metalloid contaminants, and highlight the need for further research in this area. The role of mining activities in the fate and transport of environmental contaminants may become increasingly important in the coming decades, as climate change and land use are projected to intensify, both of which can substantially increase the potential for dust emissions and transport. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A Review on the Importance of Metals and Metalloids in Atmospheric Dust and Aerosol from Mining Operations

PubMed Central

Csavina, Janae; Field, Jason; Taylor, Mark P.; Gao, Song; Landázuri, Andrea; Betterton, Eric A.; Sáez, A. Eduardo

2012-01-01

Contaminants can be transported rapidly and over relatively long distances by atmospheric dust and aerosol relative to other media such as water, soil and biota; yet few studies have explicitly evaluated the environmental implications of this pathway, making it a fundamental but understudied transport mechanism. Although there are numerous natural and anthropogenic activities that can increase dust and aerosol emissions and contaminant levels in the environment, mining operations are notable with respect to the quantity of particulates generated, the global extent of area impacted, and the toxicity of contaminants associated with the emissions. Here we review (i) the environmental fate and transport of metals and metalloids in dust and aerosol from mining operations, (ii) current methodologies used to assess contaminant concentrations and particulate emissions, and (iii) the potential health and environmental risks associated with airborne contaminants from mining operations. The review evaluates future research priorities based on the available literature and suggest that there is a particular need to measure and understand the generation, fate and transport of airborne particulates from mining operations, specifically the finer particle fraction. More generally, our findings suggest that mining operations play an important but underappreciated role in the generation of contaminated atmospheric dust and aerosol and the transport of metal and metalloid contaminants, and highlight the need for further research in this area. The role of mining activities in the fate and transport of environmental contaminants may become increasingly important in the coming decades, as climate change and land use are projected to intensify, both of which can substantially increase the potential for dust emissions and transport. PMID:22766428

Digital mine claim density map for Federal lands in Montana, 1996

USGS Publications Warehouse

Campbell, Harry W.; Hyndman, Paul C.

1998-01-01

This report describes a digital map and data files generated by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to provide digital spatial mining claim information for Federal lands in Montana as of March, 1997. Statewide, 159,704 claims had been recorded with the Bureau of Land Management since 1975. Of those claims, 21,055 (13%) are still actively held while 138,649 (87%) are closed and are no longer held. Montana contains 147,704 sections (usually 1 section equals 1 square mile) in the Public Land Survey System, with 8,569 sections (6%) containing claim data. Of the sections with claim data, 2,192 (26%) contain actively held claims. Only 1.5% of Montana’s sections contains actively held mining claims. The four types of mining claim are lode, placer, mill, and tunnel. A mill claim may be as much as 5 acres or 1/128th (0.78125%) of a square mile. A lode claim, about 20 acres, would cover 1/32nd (3.125%) of a square mile. Mining claim data is earth science information deemed to be relevant to the assessment of historic, current, and future ecological, economic, and social systems. The digital map and data files that are available in this report are suitable for geographic information system (GIS)-based regional assessments at a scale of 1:100,000 or smaller. Campbell (1996) summarized the methodology and GIS techniques that were used to produce the mining claim density map of the Pacific Northwest. Campbell and Hyndman (1997) displayed mining claim information for the Pacific Northwest that used data acquired in 1994. Appendix A of this report lists the attribute data for the digital data files. Appendix B contains the GIS metadata.

Enhancing a Core Journal Collection for Digital Libraries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kovacevic, Ana; Devedzic, Vladan; Pocajt, Viktor

2010-01-01

Purpose: This paper aims to address the problem of enhancing the selection of titles offered by a digital library, by analysing the differences in these titles when they are cited by local authors in their publications and when they are listed in the digital library offer. Design/methodology/approach: Text mining techniques were used to identify…

Query Classification and Study of University Students' Search Trends

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Maabreh, Majdi A.; Al-Kabi, Mohammed N.; Alsmadi, Izzat M.

2012-01-01

Purpose: This study is an attempt to develop an automatic identification method for Arabic web queries and divide them into several query types using data mining. In addition, it seeks to evaluate the impact of the academic environment on using the internet. Design/methodology/approach: The web log files were collected from one of the higher…

Accidental Water Pollution Risk Analysis of Mine Tailings Ponds in Guanting Reservoir Watershed, Zhangjiakou City, China.

PubMed

Liu, Renzhi; Liu, Jing; Zhang, Zhijiao; Borthwick, Alistair; Zhang, Ke

2015-12-02

Over the past half century, a surprising number of major pollution incidents occurred due to tailings dam failures. Most previous studies of such incidents comprised forensic analyses of environmental impacts after a tailings dam failure, with few considering the combined pollution risk before incidents occur at a watershed-scale. We therefore propose Watershed-scale Tailings-pond Pollution Risk Analysis (WTPRA), designed for multiple mine tailings ponds, stemming from previous watershed-scale accidental pollution risk assessments. Transferred and combined risk is embedded using risk rankings of multiple routes of the "source-pathway-target" in the WTPRA. The previous approach is modified using multi-criteria analysis, dam failure models, and instantaneous water quality models, which are modified for application to multiple tailings ponds. The study area covers the basin of Gutanting Reservoir (the largest backup drinking water source for Beijing) in Zhangjiakou City, where many mine tailings ponds are located. The resultant map shows that risk is higher downstream of Gutanting Reservoir and in its two tributary basins (i.e., Qingshui River and Longyang River). Conversely, risk is lower in the midstream and upstream reaches. The analysis also indicates that the most hazardous mine tailings ponds are located in Chongli and Xuanhua, and that Guanting Reservoir is the most vulnerable receptor. Sensitivity and uncertainty analyses are performed to validate the robustness of the WTPRA method.

Accidental Water Pollution Risk Analysis of Mine Tailings Ponds in Guanting Reservoir Watershed, Zhangjiakou City, China

PubMed Central

Liu, Renzhi; Liu, Jing; Zhang, Zhijiao; Borthwick, Alistair; Zhang, Ke

2015-01-01

Over the past half century, a surprising number of major pollution incidents occurred due to tailings dam failures. Most previous studies of such incidents comprised forensic analyses of environmental impacts after a tailings dam failure, with few considering the combined pollution risk before incidents occur at a watershed-scale. We therefore propose Watershed-scale Tailings-pond Pollution Risk Analysis (WTPRA), designed for multiple mine tailings ponds, stemming from previous watershed-scale accidental pollution risk assessments. Transferred and combined risk is embedded using risk rankings of multiple routes of the “source-pathway-target” in the WTPRA. The previous approach is modified using multi-criteria analysis, dam failure models, and instantaneous water quality models, which are modified for application to multiple tailings ponds. The study area covers the basin of Gutanting Reservoir (the largest backup drinking water source for Beijing) in Zhangjiakou City, where many mine tailings ponds are located. The resultant map shows that risk is higher downstream of Gutanting Reservoir and in its two tributary basins (i.e., Qingshui River and Longyang River). Conversely, risk is lower in the midstream and upstream reaches. The analysis also indicates that the most hazardous mine tailings ponds are located in Chongli and Xuanhua, and that Guanting Reservoir is the most vulnerable receptor. Sensitivity and uncertainty analyses are performed to validate the robustness of the WTPRA method. PMID:26633450

The Feasibility of Using Large-Scale Text Mining to Detect Adverse Childhood Experiences in a VA-Treated Population.

PubMed

Hammond, Kenric W; Ben-Ari, Alon Y; Laundry, Ryan J; Boyko, Edward J; Samore, Matthew H

2015-12-01

Free text in electronic health records resists large-scale analysis. Text records facts of interest not found in encoded data, and text mining enables their retrieval and quantification. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) clinical data repository affords an opportunity to apply text-mining methodology to study clinical questions in large populations. To assess the feasibility of text mining, investigation of the relationship between exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and recorded diagnoses was conducted among all VA-treated Gulf war veterans, utilizing all progress notes recorded from 2000-2011. Text processing extracted ACE exposures recorded among 44.7 million clinical notes belonging to 243,973 veterans. The relationship of ACE exposure to adult illnesses was analyzed using logistic regression. Bias considerations were assessed. ACE score was strongly associated with suicide attempts and serious mental disorders (ORs = 1.84 to 1.97), and less so with behaviorally mediated and somatic conditions (ORs = 1.02 to 1.36) per unit. Bias adjustments did not remove persistent associations between ACE score and most illnesses. Text mining to detect ACE exposure in a large population was feasible. Analysis of the relationship between ACE score and adult health conditions yielded patterns of association consistent with prior research. Copyright © 2015 International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

Discovery of Fe–Ce Oxide/BiVO 4 Photoanodes through Combinatorial Exploration of Ni–Fe–Co–Ce Oxide Coatings

DOE PAGES

Shinde, Aniketa; Guevarra, Dan; Liu, Guiji; ...

2016-08-23

An efficient photoanode is a prerequisite for a viable solar fuels technology. The challenges to realizing an efficient photoanode include the integration of a semiconductor light absorber and a metal oxide electrocatalyst to optimize corrosion protection, light trapping, hole transport, and photocarrier recombination sites. In order to efficiently explore metal oxide coatings, we employ a high throughput methodology wherein a uniform BiVO 4 film is coated with 858 unique metal oxide coatings covering a range of metal oxide loadings and the full (Ni-Fe-Co-Ce)Ox pseudo-quaternary composition space. Photoelectrochemical characterization of the photoanodes reveals that specific combinations of metal oxide composition andmore » loading provide up to a 13-fold increase in the maximum photoelectrochemical power generation for oxygen evolution in pH 13 electrolyte. Through mining of the high throughput data we identify composition regions that form improved interfaces with BiVO 4. Of particular note, integrated photoanodes with catalyst compositions in the range Fe (0.4-0.6)Ce (0.6-0.4)O x exhibit high interface quality and excellent photoelectrochemical power conversion. Furthermore, for scaled-up inkjet-printed electrodes and photoanodic electrodeposition of this composition on BiVO 4 we can confirm the discovery and the synthesis-independent interface improvement of (Fe-Ce)O x coatings on BiVO 4.« less

Discovery of Fe–Ce Oxide/BiVO 4 Photoanodes through Combinatorial Exploration of Ni–Fe–Co–Ce Oxide Coatings

DOE PAGES

Shinde, Aniketa; Guevarra, Dan; Liu, Guiji; ...

2016-08-23

An efficient photoanode is a prerequisite for a viable solar fuels technology. The challenges to realizing an efficient photoanode include the integration of a semiconductor light absorber and a metal oxide electrocatalyst to optimize corrosion protection, light trapping, hole transport, and photocarrier recombination sites. In order to efficiently explore metal oxide coatings, we employ a high throughput methodology wherein a uniform BiVO 4 film is coated with 858 unique metal oxide coatings covering a range of metal oxide loadings and the full (Ni-Fe-Co-Ce)O x pseudo-quaternary composition space. Photoelectrochemical characterization of the photoanodes reveals that specific combinations of metal oxide compositionmore » and loading provide up to a 13-fold increase in the maximum photoelectrochemical power generation for oxygen evolution in pH 13 electrolyte. Through mining of the high throughput data we identify composition regions that form improved interfaces with BiVO 4. Of particular note, integrated photoanodes with catalyst compositions in the range Fe (0.4-0.6)Ce (0.6-0.4)O x exhibit high interface quality and excellent photoelectrochemical power conversion. Furthermore, for scaled-up inkjet-printed electrodes and photoanodic electrodeposition of this composition on BiVO 4 we can confirm the discovery and the synthesis-independent interface improvement of (Fe-Ce)O x coatings on BiVO 4.« less

A study of unstable rock failures using finite difference and discrete element methods

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Garvey, Ryan J.

Case histories in mining have long described pillars or faces of rock failing violently with an accompanying rapid ejection of debris and broken material into the working areas of the mine. These unstable failures have resulted in large losses of life and collapses of entire mine panels. Modern mining operations take significant steps to reduce the likelihood of unstable failure, however eliminating their occurrence is difficult in practice. Researchers over several decades have supplemented studies of unstable failures through the application of various numerical methods. The direction of the current research is to extend these methods and to develop improved numerical tools with which to study unstable failures in underground mining layouts. An extensive study is first conducted on the expression of unstable failure in discrete element and finite difference methods. Simulated uniaxial compressive strength tests are run on brittle rock specimens. Stable or unstable loading conditions are applied onto the brittle specimens by a pair of elastic platens with ranging stiffnesses. Determinations of instability are established through stress and strain histories taken for the specimen and the system. Additional numerical tools are then developed for the finite difference method to analyze unstable failure in larger mine models. Instability identifiers are established for assessing the locations and relative magnitudes of unstable failure through measures of rapid dynamic motion. An energy balance is developed which calculates the excess energy released as a result of unstable equilibria in rock systems. These tools are validated through uniaxial and triaxial compressive strength tests and are extended to models of coal pillars and a simplified mining layout. The results of the finite difference simulations reveal that the instability identifiers and excess energy calculations provide a generalized methodology for assessing unstable failures within potentially complex mine models. These combined numerical tools may be applied in future studies to design primary and secondary supports in bump-prone conditions, evaluate retreat mining cut sequences, asses pillar de-stressing techniques, or perform backanalyses on unstable failures in select mining layouts.

Optimization of Fe2+ Removal from Coal Mine Wastewater using Activated Biochar of Colocasia esculenta.

PubMed

Banerjee, Soumya; LaminKa-Ot, Augustine; Joshi, S R; Mandal, Tamal; Halder, Gopinath

2017-09-01

  The present study investigates the sorptive removal of Fe2+ from simulated coal mine waste water using steam activated biochar (SABC) developed from the roots of Colocasia esculenta. The process was optimized by response surface methodology (RSM) under the influence of pH, temperature, adsorbent dosage and contact time at a constant shaking speed of 180 rpm with an initial concentration of 3 mg/L. The uptake performance of the biosorbent was assessed following a 24 full factorial experimental matrix developed by central composite design approach. Adsorbent was characterised by SEM, EDAX, XRD and B.E.T surface area analyzer. Maximum removal of 72.96% of Fe2+ was observed at pH 7.75, temperature 37.5 °C, adsorbent dosage 1.5 g/L for a time period of 180 mins. The study suggested that SABC prepared from roots of Colocasia esculenta could be used as an efficient and cost effective sorbent for removal of Fe2+ from coal mine wastewater.

New approach to generating insights for aging research based on literature mining and knowledge integration

PubMed Central

Kwon, Yeondae; Natori, Yukikazu

2017-01-01

The proportion of the elderly population in most countries worldwide is increasing dramatically. Therefore, social interest in the fields of health, longevity, and anti-aging has been increasing as well. However, the basic research results obtained from a reductionist approach in biology and a bioinformatic approach in genome science have limited usefulness for generating insights on future health, longevity, and anti-aging-related research on a case by case basis. We propose a new approach that uses our literature mining technique and bioinformatics, which lead to a better perspective on research trends by providing an expanded knowledge base to work from. We demonstrate that our approach provides useful information that deepens insights on future trends which differs from data obtained conventionally, and this methodology is already paving the way for a new field in aging-related research based on literature mining. One compelling example of this is how our new approach can be a useful tool in drug repositioning. PMID:28817730

Relationships between palaeogeography and opal occurrence in Australia: A data-mining approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Landgrebe, T. C. W.; Merdith, A.; Dutkiewicz, A.; Müller, R. D.

2013-07-01

Age-coded multi-layered geological datasets are becoming increasingly prevalent with the surge in open-access geodata, yet there are few methodologies for extracting geological information and knowledge from these data. We present a novel methodology, based on the open-source GPlates software in which age-coded digital palaeogeographic maps are used to “data-mine” spatio-temporal patterns related to the occurrence of Australian opal. Our aim is to test the concept that only a particular sequence of depositional/erosional environments may lead to conditions suitable for the formation of gem quality sedimentary opal. Time-varying geographic environment properties are extracted from a digital palaeogeographic dataset of the eastern Australian Great Artesian Basin (GAB) at 1036 opal localities. We obtain a total of 52 independent ordinal sequences sampling 19 time slices from the Early Cretaceous to the present-day. We find that 95% of the known opal deposits are tied to only 27 sequences all comprising fluvial and shallow marine depositional sequences followed by a prolonged phase of erosion. We then map the total area of the GAB that matches these 27 opal-specific sequences, resulting in an opal-prospective region of only about 10% of the total area of the basin. The key patterns underlying this association involve only a small number of key environmental transitions. We demonstrate that these key associations are generally absent at arbitrary locations in the basin. This new methodology allows for the simplification of a complex time-varying geological dataset into a single map view, enabling straightforward application for opal exploration and for future co-assessment with other datasets/geological criteria. This approach may help unravel the poorly understood opal formation process using an empirical spatio-temporal data-mining methodology and readily available datasets to aid hypothesis testing.

Design of strength characteristics on the example of a mining support

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gwiazda, A.; Sękala, A.; Banaś, W.; Topolska, S.; Foit, K.; Monica, Z.

2017-08-01

It is a special group of particular design aproches that could be characterized as “design for X”. All areas of specific these design methodology, taking into account the requirements of the life cycle are described with the acronym DfX. It means an integrated computing platform approach to design binding together both the area of design knowledge and area of computer systems. In this perspective, computer systems are responsible for the link between design requirements with the subject of the project and to filter the information being circulated throughout the operation of the project. The DfX methodologies together form an approach integrating to different functional areas of industrial organization. Among the internal elements it can distinguish the structure of the project team, the people making it, the same process design, control system design and implementation of the action tools to assist this process. Among the elements that are obtained in the framework of this approach should be distinguished: higher operating efficiency, professionalism, the ability to create innovation, incremental progress of the project and the appropriate focus of the project team. It have been done attempts to integrate identified specific areas for action in the field of design methodology. They have already taken place earlier in the design due to the Economic Design for Manufacture. This approach was characteristic for European industry. In this case, an approach was developed in methodology, which can be defined as the Design to/for Cost. The article presents the idea of an integrated design approach related with the DfX approach. The results are described on the base of a virtual 3D model of a mining support. This model was elaborated in the advanced engineering platform like Siemens PLM NX.

Assessing and Minimizing Adversarial Risk in a Nuclear Material Transportation Network

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-09-01

0704-0188) Washington DC 20503. 1. AGENCY USE ONLY (Leave Blank) 2. REPORT DATE 09-27-2013 3. REPORT TYPE AND DATES COVERED Master’s Thesis 4. TITLE AND...U.S. as of July 2013. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Figure A.1 Google Earth routing from Areva to Arkansas Nuclear...Uranium ore is mined or removed from the earth in a leaching process. 2. Conversion (1). Triuranium octoxide (U3O8, “yellowcake”) is converted into ura

Science and Technology Text Mining: Electrochemical Power

DTIC Science & Technology

2003-07-14

X-RAY DIFFRACTION, TRANSMISSION ELECTRON MICROSCOPY, X- RAY PHOTOELECTRON SPECTROSCOPY, ELECTROCHEMICAL MEASUREMENTS, THERMOGRAVIMETRIC ANALYSIS ...0 -0 0 -0 0 -0 0 -0 -0 -0 0 0 thermogravimetric analysis -0 -0 0 -0 0 0 -0 -0 -0 0 0 0 -0 0 -0 0 -0 0 -0 -0 0 SEM 0 -0 0 0 -0 -0 -0 -0 0 -0 0 -0 -0 0...Capacitors; Energy Production; Power Production; Energy Conversion; Energy Storage; Citation Analysis ; Scientometrics; Military Requirements REPORT

Methylation of Hg downstream from the Bonanza Hg mine, Oregon

USGS Publications Warehouse

Gray, John E.; Hines, Mark E.; Krabbenhoft, David P.; Thoms, Bryn

2012-01-01

Speciation of Hg and conversion to methyl-Hg were evaluated in stream sediment, stream water, and aquatic snails collected downstream from the Bonanza Hg mine, Oregon. Total production from the Bonanza mine was >1360t of Hg, during mining from the late 1800s to 1960, ranking it as an intermediate sized Hg mine on an international scale. The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the distribution, transport, and methylation of Hg downstream from a Hg mine in a coastal temperate climatic zone. Data shown here for methyl-Hg, a neurotoxin hazardous to humans, are the first reported for sediment and water from this area. Stream sediment collected from Foster Creek flowing downstream from the Bonanza mine contained elevated Hg concentrations that ranged from 590 to 71,000ng/g, all of which (except the most distal sample) exceeded the probable effect concentration (PEC) of 1060ng/g, the Hg concentration above which harmful effects are likely to be observed in sediment-dwelling organisms. Concentrations of methyl-Hg in stream sediment collected from Foster Creek varied from 11 to 62ng/g and were highly elevated compared to regional baseline concentrations (0.11-0.82ng/g) established in this study. Methyl-Hg concentrations in stream sediment collected in this study showed a significant correlation with total organic C (TOC, R2=0.62), generally indicating increased methyl-Hg formation with increasing TOC in sediment. Isotopic-tracer methods indicated that several samples of Foster Creek sediment exhibited high rates of Hg-methylation. Concentrations of Hg in water collected downstream from the mine varied from 17 to 270ng/L and were also elevated compared to baselines, but all were below the 770ng/L Hg standard recommended by the USEPA to protect against chronic effects to aquatic wildlife. Concentrations of methyl-Hg in the water collected from Foster Creek ranged from 0.17 to 1.8ng/L, which were elevated compared to regional baseline sites upstream and downstream from the mine that varied from <0.02 to 0.22ng/L. Aquatic snails collected downstream from the mine were elevated in Hg indicating significant bioavailability and uptake of Hg by these snails. Results for sediment and water indicated significant methyl-Hg formation in the ecosystem downstream from the Bonanza mine, which is enhanced by the temperate climate, high precipitation in the area, and high organic matter.

Instantaneous Conversion of [11 C]CO2 to [11 C]CO via Fluoride-Activated Disilane Species.

PubMed

Taddei, Carlotta; Bongarzone, Salvatore; Gee, Antony D

2017-06-07

The development of a fast and novel methodology to generate carbon-11 carbon monoxide ([ 11 C]CO) from cyclotron-produced carbon-11 carbon dioxide ([ 11 C]CO 2 ) mediated by a fluoride-activated disilane species is described. This methodology allows up to 74 % conversion of [ 11 C]CO 2 to [ 11 C]CO using commercially available reagents, readily available laboratory equipment and mild reaction conditions (room temperature). As proof of utility, radiochemically pure [carbonyl- 11 C]N-benzylbenzamide was successfully synthesized from produced [ 11 C]CO in up to 74 % radiochemical yield (RCY) and >99 % radiochemical purity (RCP) in ≤10 min from end of [ 11 C]CO 2 delivery. © 2017 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

Cultural Studies Methodologies and Narrative Family Therapy: Therapeutic Conversations About Pop Culture.

PubMed

Tilsen, Julie; Nylund, David

2016-06-01

Therapists recognize that popular media culture is an influential force that shapes identities and relationships in contemporary society. Indeed, people have serious relationships with the commodities and practices that emerge from pop culture. However, they often lack the conceptual and conversational resources to engage meaningfully with clients about pop culture's influence in their lives. Cultural studies is introduced as an interdisciplinary approach that provides frameworks for both theory and practice that position therapists and clients to critically examine the role of pop culture in their lives. Cultural studies and narrative therapy are discussed as praxis allies that share a populist political intention and counter-hegemonic discursive practices. The integration of cultural studies methodologies into narrative therapy practice with a parent and her teenage daughter is illustrated through a case vignette. © 2016 Family Process Institute.

Assessing human rights impacts in corporate development projects

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Salcito, Kendyl, E-mail: kendyl.salcito@unibas.ch; University of Basel, P.O. Box, CH-4003 Basel; NomoGaia, 1900 Wazee Street, Suite 303, Denver, CO 80202

Human rights impact assessment (HRIA) is a process for systematically identifying, predicting and responding to the potential impact on human rights of a business operation, capital project, government policy or trade agreement. Traditionally, it has been conducted as a desktop exercise to predict the effects of trade agreements and government policies on individuals and communities. In line with a growing call for multinational corporations to ensure they do not violate human rights in their activities, HRIA is increasingly incorporated into the standard suite of corporate development project impact assessments. In this context, the policy world's non-structured, desk-based approaches to HRIAmore » are insufficient. Although a number of corporations have commissioned and conducted HRIA, no broadly accepted and validated assessment tool is currently available. The lack of standardisation has complicated efforts to evaluate the effectiveness of HRIA as a risk mitigation tool, and has caused confusion in the corporate world regarding company duties. Hence, clarification is needed. The objectives of this paper are (i) to describe an HRIA methodology, (ii) to provide a rationale for its components and design, and (iii) to illustrate implementation of HRIA using the methodology in two selected corporate development projects—a uranium mine in Malawi and a tree farm in Tanzania. We found that as a prognostic tool, HRIA could examine potential positive and negative human rights impacts and provide effective recommendations for mitigation. However, longer-term monitoring revealed that recommendations were unevenly implemented, dependent on market conditions and personnel movements. This instability in the approach to human rights suggests a need for on-going monitoring and surveillance. -- Highlights: • We developed a novel methodology for corporate human rights impact assessment. • We piloted the methodology on two corporate projects—a mine and a plantation. • Human rights impact assessment exposed impacts not foreseen in ESIA. • Corporations adopted the majority of findings, but not necessarily immediately. • Methodological advancements are expected for monitoring processes.« less

Communication nonaccommodation in family conversations about end-of-life health decisions.

PubMed

Scott, Allison M; Caughlin, John P

2015-01-01

Furthering our understanding of how communication can improve end-of-life decision making requires a shift in focus from whether people talk to how people talk about end-of-life health decisions. This study used communication accommodation theory to examine the extent to which communication nonaccommodation distinguished more from less successful end-of-life conversations among family members. We analyzed elicited conversations about end-of-life health decisions from 121 older parent/adult child dyads using outside ratings of communication over- and underaccommodation and self-reported conversational outcomes. Results of multilevel linear modeling revealed that outside ratings of underaccommodation predicted self-reported and partner-reported uncertainty, and ratings of overaccommodation predicted self-reported decision-making efficacy and change in concordance accuracy. We discuss the methodological, theoretical, and practical implications of these findings.

Environmental assessment of an aircraft conversion, Montana Air National Guard, Great Falls, Montana

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Williams, G.; Policastro, A.; Krummel, J.

1986-08-01

It is proposed that the 120th Fighter Interceptor Group of the Montana Air National Guard convert from 18 F-106 to 18 F-16 aircraft. Associated with this conversion are building modifications, land acquisition, and facility construction. The environmental assessment determined that the primary impacts of the conversion would be positive. Noise modeling using the NOISEMAP methodology showed that the maximum noise reduction, resulting from the conversion, at any ground receptor point is about 5 dB on the L/sub dn/ scale. The noise reductions vary with the distance of a receptor point from the runways - the greater the distance, the smallermore » the noise reduction. Conversion to the F-16 prior to completion of a ''hush house'' would result in a temporary increase in noise to the southeast of the airport over a commercial and industrial area. In addition, total air pollutant emissions from aircraft operations would be reduced as a consequence of the conversion. No significant adverse impacts are predicted as a result of the conversion from F-106s to F-16s.« less

A comparative life cycle assessment of material handling systems for sustainable mining.

PubMed

Erkayaoğlu, M; Demirel, N

2016-06-01

In this comprehensive LCA comparison study, main objectives are to investigate life cycle environmental impacts of off-highway mining trucks and belt conveyors in surface mining. The research methodology essentially entails determination of the functional unit as 20,000 tons/day coal production transported for 5 km distance. After the system boundary was selected as the entire life cycle of material handling systems including pre-manufacturing of steel parts and plastic components, manufacturing, transportation, and utilization data was compiled from equipment manufacturers and the Eco-invent database. Life cycle impact categories for both material-handling systems were identified and the developed model was implemented using SIMAPRO 7.3. Climate change and acidification were selected as major impact categories as they were considered to be major concerns in mining industry. Although manufacturing stage had a significant impact on all of the environmental parameters, utilization stage was the hotspot for the selected impact categories. The results of this study revealed that belt conveyors have a greater environmental burden in climate change impact category when compared to the trucks. On the other hand, trucks have a greater environmental burden in acidification impact category when compared to the belt conveyors. This study implied that technological improvement in fuel combustion and electricity generation is crucial for the improvement of environmental profiles of off-highway trucks and belt conveyors in the mining industry. The main novelty of this study is that it is the first initiative in applying LCA in the Turkish mining industry. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Electron-beam lithography with character projection exposure for throughput enhancement with line-edge quality optimization

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ikeno, Rimon; Maruyama, Satoshi; Mita, Yoshio; Ikeda, Makoto; Asada, Kunihiro

2016-03-01

Among various electron-beam lithography (EBL) techniques, variable-shaped beam (VSB) and character projection (CP) methods have attracted many EBL users for their high-throughput feature, but they are considered to be more suited to small-featured VLSI fabrication with regularly-arranged layouts like standard-cell logics and memory arrays. On the other hand, non-VLSI applications like photonics, MEMS, MOEMS, and so on, have not been fully utilized the benefit of CP method due to their wide variety of layout patterns. In addition, the stepwise edge shapes by VSB method often causes intolerable edge roughness to degrade device characteristics from its intended performance with smooth edges. We proposed an overall EBL methodology applicable to wade-variety of EBL applications utilizing VSB and CP methods. Its key idea is in our layout data conversion algorithm that decomposes curved or oblique edges of arbitrary layout patterns into CP shots. We expect significant reduction in EB shot count with a CP-bordered exposure data compared to the corresponding VSB-alone conversion result. Several CP conversion parameters are used to optimize EB exposure throughput, edge quality, and resultant device characteristics. We demonstrated out methodology using the leading-edge VSB/CP EBL tool, ADVANTEST F7000S-VD02, with high resolution Hydrogen Silsesquioxane (HSQ) resist. Through our experiments of curved and oblique edge lithography under various data conversion conditions, we learned correspondence of the conversion parameters to the resultant edge roughness and other conditions. They will be utilized as the fundamental data for further enhancement of our EBL strategy for optimized EB exposure.

Examining the impact of cell phone conversations on driving using meta-analytic techniques.

PubMed

Horrey, William J; Wickens, Christopher D

2006-01-01

The performance costs associated with cell phone use while driving were assessed meta-analytically using standardized measures of effect size along five dimensions. There have been many studies on the impact of cell phone use on driving, showing some mixed findings. Twenty-three studies (contributing 47 analysis entries) met the appropriate conditions for the meta-analysis. The statistical results from each of these studies were converted into effect sizes and combined in the meta-analysis. Overall, there were clear costs to driving performance when drivers were engaged in cell phone conversations. However, subsequent analyses indicated that these costs were borne primarily by reaction time tasks, with far smaller costs associated with tracking (lane-keeping) performance. Hands-free and handheld phones revealed similar patterns of results for both measures of performance. Conversation tasks tended to show greater costs than did information-processing tasks (e.g., word games). There was a similar pattern of results for passenger and remote (cell phone) conversations. Finally, there were some small differences between simulator and field studies, though both exhibited costs in performance for cell phone use. We suggest that (a) there are significant costs to driver reactions to external hazards or events associated with cell phone use, (b) hands-free cell phones do not eliminate or substantially reduce these costs, and (c) different research methodologies or performance measures may underestimate these costs. Potential applications of this research include the assessment of performance costs attributable to different types of cell phones, cell phone conversations, experimental measures, or methodologies.

An Outbreak of Lymphocutaneous Sporotrichosis among Mine-Workers in South Africa

PubMed Central

Govender, Nelesh P.; Maphanga, Tsidiso G.; Zulu, Thokozile G.; Patel, Jaymati; Walaza, Sibongile; Jacobs, Charlene; Ebonwu, Joy I.; Ntuli, Sindile; Naicker, Serisha D.; Thomas, Juno

2015-01-01

Background The largest outbreak of sporotrichosis occurred between 1938 and 1947 in the gold mines of Witwatersrand in South Africa. Here, we describe an outbreak of lymphocutaneous sporotrichosis that was investigated in a South African gold mine in 2011. Methodology Employees working at a reopened section of the mine were recruited for a descriptive cross-sectional study. Informed consent was sought for interview, clinical examination and medical record review. Specimens were collected from participants with active or partially-healed lymphocutaneous lesions. Environmental samples were collected from underground mine levels. Sporothrix isolates were identified by sequencing of the internal transcribed spacer region of the ribosomal gene and the nuclear calmodulin gene. Principal Findings Of 87 male miners, 81 (93%) were interviewed and examined, of whom 29 (36%) had skin lesions; specimens were collected from 17 (59%). Sporotrichosis was laboratory-confirmed among 10 patients and seven had clinically-compatible lesions. Of 42 miners with known HIV status, 11 (26%) were HIV-infected. No cases of disseminated disease were detected. Participants with ≤3 years’ mining experience had a four times greater odds of developing sporotrichosis than those who had been employed for >3 years (adjusted OR 4.0, 95% CI 1.2–13.1). Isolates from 8 patients were identified as Sporothrix schenckii sensu stricto by calmodulin gene sequencing while environmental isolates were identified as Sporothrix mexicana. Conclusions/Significance S. schenckii sensu stricto was identified as the causative pathogen. Although genetically distinct species were isolated from clinical and environmental sources, it is likely that the source was contaminated soil and untreated wood underground. No cases occurred following recommendations to close sections of the mine, treat timber and encourage consistent use of personal protective equipment. Sporotrichosis is a potentially re-emerging disease where traditional, rather than heavily mechanised, mining techniques are used. Surveillance should be instituted at sentinel locations. PMID:26407300

Human health and safety risks management in underground coal mines using fuzzy TOPSIS.

PubMed

Mahdevari, Satar; Shahriar, Kourosh; Esfahanipour, Akbar

2014-08-01

The scrutiny of health and safety of personnel working in underground coal mines is heightened because of fatalities and disasters that occur every year worldwide. A methodology based on fuzzy TOPSIS was proposed to assess the risks associated with human health in order to manage control measures and support decision-making, which could provide the right balance between different concerns, such as safety and costs. For this purpose, information collected from three hazardous coal mines namely Hashouni, Hojedk and Babnizu located at the Kerman coal deposit, Iran, were used to manage the risks affecting the health and safety of their miners. Altogether 86 hazards were identified and classified under eight categories: geomechanical, geochemical, electrical, mechanical, chemical, environmental, personal, and social, cultural and managerial risks. Overcoming the uncertainty of qualitative data, the ranking process is accomplished by fuzzy TOPSIS. After running the model, twelve groups with different risks were obtained. Located in the first group, the most important risks with the highest negative effects are: materials falling, catastrophic failure, instability of coalface and immediate roof, firedamp explosion, gas emission, misfire, stopping of ventilation system, wagon separation at inclines, asphyxiation, inadequate training and poor site management system. According to the results, the proposed methodology can be a reliable technique for management of the minatory hazards and coping with uncertainties affecting the health and safety of miners when performance ratings are imprecise. The proposed model can be primarily designed to identify potential hazards and help in taking appropriate measures to minimize or remove the risks before accidents can occur. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

@Note: a workbench for biomedical text mining.

PubMed

Lourenço, Anália; Carreira, Rafael; Carneiro, Sónia; Maia, Paulo; Glez-Peña, Daniel; Fdez-Riverola, Florentino; Ferreira, Eugénio C; Rocha, Isabel; Rocha, Miguel

2009-08-01

Biomedical Text Mining (BioTM) is providing valuable approaches to the automated curation of scientific literature. However, most efforts have addressed the benchmarking of new algorithms rather than user operational needs. Bridging the gap between BioTM researchers and biologists' needs is crucial to solve real-world problems and promote further research. We present @Note, a platform for BioTM that aims at the effective translation of the advances between three distinct classes of users: biologists, text miners and software developers. Its main functional contributions are the ability to process abstracts and full-texts; an information retrieval module enabling PubMed search and journal crawling; a pre-processing module with PDF-to-text conversion, tokenisation and stopword removal; a semantic annotation schema; a lexicon-based annotator; a user-friendly annotation view that allows to correct annotations and a Text Mining Module supporting dataset preparation and algorithm evaluation. @Note improves the interoperability, modularity and flexibility when integrating in-home and open-source third-party components. Its component-based architecture allows the rapid development of new applications, emphasizing the principles of transparency and simplicity of use. Although it is still on-going, it has already allowed the development of applications that are currently being used.

U.S. Geological Survey and Afghanistan Ministry of Mines and Industry cooperative assessment of Afghanistan's undiscovered oil and gas

USGS Publications Warehouse

Wandrey, Craig J.; Ulmishek, Gregory; Agena, Warren; Klett, Timothy R.; ,

2006-01-01

Results of the U.S. Geological Survey and Afghanistan Ministry of Mines and Industry cooperative assessment of undiscovered petroleum resources of northern Afghanistan were first released through this presentation on March 14, 2006, at the Afghan Embassy in Washington, D.C. On March 15 the results were presented in Kabul, Afghanistan. The purpose of the assessment and release of the results is to provide energy data required to implement the rebuilding and development of Afghanistan's energy infrastructure. This presentation includes a summary of the goals, process, methodology, results, and accomplishments of the assessment. It provides context for Fact Sheet 2006-3031, a summary of assessment results provided in the presentations.

Optimizing Functional Network Representation of Multivariate Time Series

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zanin, Massimiliano; Sousa, Pedro; Papo, David; Bajo, Ricardo; García-Prieto, Juan; Pozo, Francisco Del; Menasalvas, Ernestina; Boccaletti, Stefano

2012-09-01

By combining complex network theory and data mining techniques, we provide objective criteria for optimization of the functional network representation of generic multivariate time series. In particular, we propose a method for the principled selection of the threshold value for functional network reconstruction from raw data, and for proper identification of the network's indicators that unveil the most discriminative information on the system for classification purposes. We illustrate our method by analysing networks of functional brain activity of healthy subjects, and patients suffering from Mild Cognitive Impairment, an intermediate stage between the expected cognitive decline of normal aging and the more pronounced decline of dementia. We discuss extensions of the scope of the proposed methodology to network engineering purposes, and to other data mining tasks.

Optimizing Functional Network Representation of Multivariate Time Series

PubMed Central

Zanin, Massimiliano; Sousa, Pedro; Papo, David; Bajo, Ricardo; García-Prieto, Juan; Pozo, Francisco del; Menasalvas, Ernestina; Boccaletti, Stefano

2012-01-01

By combining complex network theory and data mining techniques, we provide objective criteria for optimization of the functional network representation of generic multivariate time series. In particular, we propose a method for the principled selection of the threshold value for functional network reconstruction from raw data, and for proper identification of the network's indicators that unveil the most discriminative information on the system for classification purposes. We illustrate our method by analysing networks of functional brain activity of healthy subjects, and patients suffering from Mild Cognitive Impairment, an intermediate stage between the expected cognitive decline of normal aging and the more pronounced decline of dementia. We discuss extensions of the scope of the proposed methodology to network engineering purposes, and to other data mining tasks. PMID:22953051

A Comparison of different learning models used in Data Mining for Medical Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Srimani, P. K.; Koti, Manjula Sanjay

2011-12-01

The present study aims at investigating the different Data mining learning models for different medical data sets and to give practical guidelines to select the most appropriate algorithm for a specific medical data set. In practical situations, it is absolutely necessary to take decisions with regard to the appropriate models and parameters for diagnosis and prediction problems. Learning models and algorithms are widely implemented for rule extraction and the prediction of system behavior. In this paper, some of the well-known Machine Learning(ML) systems are investigated for different methods and are tested on five medical data sets. The practical criteria for evaluating different learning models are presented and the potential benefits of the proposed methodology for diagnosis and learning are suggested.

Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI): Resources for Mining Mouse Genetic, Genomic, and Biological Data in Support of Primary and Translational Research.

PubMed

Eppig, Janan T; Smith, Cynthia L; Blake, Judith A; Ringwald, Martin; Kadin, James A; Richardson, Joel E; Bult, Carol J

2017-01-01

The Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI), resource ( www.informatics.jax.org ) has existed for over 25 years, and over this time its data content, informatics infrastructure, and user interfaces and tools have undergone dramatic changes (Eppig et al., Mamm Genome 26:272-284, 2015). Change has been driven by scientific methodological advances, rapid improvements in computational software, growth in computer hardware capacity, and the ongoing collaborative nature of the mouse genomics community in building resources and sharing data. Here we present an overview of the current data content of MGI, describe its general organization, and provide examples using simple and complex searches, and tools for mining and retrieving sets of data.

Comparative analysis of sustainable value distribution for stakeholders in the mining industry

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lorenc, Sylwia; Kustra, Arkadiusz

2018-01-01

The objective of this article is the analysis and comparison of the value distribution process that takes place in enterprises for stakeholders. The following coal mining enterprises are subject of this work: JSW S.A., KGHM S.A., and LW Bogdanka S.A, for which the directions of value distribution in the years 2011-2016 were presented. The article defines the main groups of the partnerships' stakeholders, such as the owners, staff, suppliers, equity providers, the country budget and the local governments' budgets. The sustainable value benchmark was defined as the benefits received by the stakeholders through the allocation of financial surplus. The value defined for the abovementioned stakeholders was assessed according to the Free Cash Flow (FCF) methodology.

40 CFR 72.42 - Phase I extension plans.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... consistent with the data filed on EIA form 767 for those years and the conversion methodology specified in... of fossil fuels (before any treatment prior to combustion) that will be used at the control unit...

40 CFR 72.42 - Phase I extension plans.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... consistent with the data filed on EIA form 767 for those years and the conversion methodology specified in... of fossil fuels (before any treatment prior to combustion) that will be used at the control unit...

40 CFR 72.42 - Phase I extension plans.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... consistent with the data filed on EIA form 767 for those years and the conversion methodology specified in... of fossil fuels (before any treatment prior to combustion) that will be used at the control unit...

40 CFR 72.42 - Phase I extension plans.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... consistent with the data filed on EIA form 767 for those years and the conversion methodology specified in... of fossil fuels (before any treatment prior to combustion) that will be used at the control unit...

40 CFR 72.42 - Phase I extension plans.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... consistent with the data filed on EIA form 767 for those years and the conversion methodology specified in... of fossil fuels (before any treatment prior to combustion) that will be used at the control unit...

Lunar Helium-3 and Fusion Power

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1988-01-01

The NASA Office of Exploration sponsored the NASA Lunar Helium-3 and Fusion Power Workshop. The meeting was held to understand the potential of using He-3 from the moon for terrestrial fusion power production. It provided an overview, two parallel working sessions, a review of sessions, and discussions. The lunar mining session concluded that mining, beneficiation, separation, and return of He-3 from the moon would be possible but that a large scale operation and improved technology is required. The fusion power session concluded that: (1) that He-3 offers significant, possibly compelling, advantages over fusion of tritium, principally increased reactor life, reduced radioactive wastes, and high efficiency conversion, (2) that detailed assessment of the potential of the D/He-3 fuel cycle requires more information, and (3) D/He-3 fusion may be best for commercial purposes, although D/T fusion is more near term.

75 FR 81165 - Examinations of Work Areas in Underground Coal Mines for Violations of Mandatory Health or Safety...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-12-27

... number of studies have shown a correlation between higher job risk and higher wages, suggesting that... & Aldy (2003) conducted an analysis of studies that use a willingness-to-pay methodology to estimate the...). Although MSHA is using the Viscusi & Aldy (2003) study as the basis for monetizing the expected benefits of...

Summary of Research 1997 Department of Systems Management.

DTIC Science & Technology

1999-01-01

formulation and execution; impacts of budget allocation , reallocation, and reduction; imple- mentation of Defense Resource Management Systems; and the...flexible structure that can be applied to a wide range of resource allocation problems. PUBLICATIONS: Dolk, D., Murphy, M., and Thomas, G...policies, procedures, and rationale in deter- mining recruiting resource allocation decisions. The methodology relies on a review of the literature

Monitoring Technology Proliferation: An Open Source Methodology For Generating Proliferation Intelligence

DTIC Science & Technology

1993-12-01

72 D. MINES AND THE MILITARY-TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION ...................................... 74 E. CUSTOMIZING THE TDD PROLIFERATION MARKET M...Data Storage & Peripherals - Systems Managmnt Technologies 4. Passive Sensors - Sensors and Signal Processing 5. Photonics - Electronic and...a reproducible procedure to allow customization of the model, provides the "guts" of the method. 18 Third, because they are not optimized for

Human action quality evaluation based on fuzzy logic with application in underground coal mining.

PubMed

Ionica, Andreea; Leba, Monica

2015-01-01

The work system is defined by its components, their roles and the relationships between them. Any work system gravitates around the human resource and the interdependencies between human factor and the other components of it. Researches in this field agreed that the human factor and its actions are difficult to quantify and predict. The objective of this paper is to apply a method of human actions evaluation in order to estimate possible risks and prevent possible system faults, both at human factor level and at equipment level. In order to point out the importance of the human factor influence on all the elements of the working systems we propose a fuzzy logic based methodology for quality evaluation of human actions. This methodology has a multidisciplinary character, as it gathers ideas and methods from: quality management, ergonomics, work safety and artificial intelligence. The results presented refer to a work system with a high degree of specificity, namely, underground coal mining and are valuable for human resources risk evaluation pattern. The fuzzy logic evaluation of the human actions leads to early detection of possible dangerous evolutions of the work system and alarm the persons in charge.

Knowledge management in secondary pharmaceutical manufacturing by mining of data historians-A proof-of-concept study.

PubMed

Meneghetti, Natascia; Facco, Pierantonio; Bezzo, Fabrizio; Himawan, Chrismono; Zomer, Simeone; Barolo, Massimiliano

2016-05-30

In this proof-of-concept study, a methodology is proposed to systematically analyze large data historians of secondary pharmaceutical manufacturing systems using data mining techniques. The objective is to develop an approach enabling to automatically retrieve operation-relevant information that can assist the management in the periodic review of a manufactory system. The proposed methodology allows one to automatically perform three tasks: the identification of single batches within the entire data-sequence of the historical dataset, the identification of distinct operating phases within each batch, and the characterization of a batch with respect to an assigned multivariate set of operating characteristics. The approach is tested on a six-month dataset of a commercial-scale granulation/drying system, where several millions of data entries are recorded. The quality of results and the generality of the approach indicate that there is a strong potential for extending the method to even larger historical datasets and to different operations, thus making it an advanced PAT tool that can assist the implementation of continual improvement paradigms within a quality-by-design framework. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

An overall index of environmental quality in coal mining areas and energy facilities.

PubMed

Vatalis, Konstantinos I; Kaliampakos, Demetrios C

2006-12-01

An approach to measuring environmental quality and trends in coal mining and industrial areas was attempted in this work. For this purpose, the establishment of a reference scale characterizing the status of environmental quality is proposed by developing an Environmental Quality Index (EQI). The methodology involves three main components: social research, the opinion of environmental experts, and the combination of new or existing indices. A survey of public opinion was carried out to identify the main environmental problems in the region of interest. Environmental experts carried out a survey, and the weights of specific environmental problems were obtained through a fuzzy Delphi method and pairwise comparison. The weight attributed to each environmental problem was computed, using new or existing indices (subindices) in the relevant literature. The EQI comprises a combination of the subindices with their own weights. The methodology was applied to a heavily industrialized coal basin in northwestern Macedonia, Greece. The results show that the new index may be used as a reliable tool for evaluating environmental quality in different areas. In addition, the study of EQI trends on an interannual basis can provide useful information on the efficiency of environmental policies already implemented by the responsible authorities.

Study of cyanotoxins presence from experimental cyanobacteria concentrations using a new data mining methodology based on multivariate adaptive regression splines in Trasona reservoir (Northern Spain).

PubMed

Garcia Nieto, P J; Sánchez Lasheras, F; de Cos Juez, F J; Alonso Fernández, J R

2011-11-15

There is an increasing need to describe cyanobacteria blooms since some cyanobacteria produce toxins, termed cyanotoxins. These latter can be toxic and dangerous to humans as well as other animals and life in general. It must be remarked that the cyanobacteria are reproduced explosively under certain conditions. This results in algae blooms, which can become harmful to other species if the cyanobacteria involved produce cyanotoxins. In this research work, the evolution of cyanotoxins in Trasona reservoir (Principality of Asturias, Northern Spain) was studied with success using the data mining methodology based on multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) technique. The results of the present study are two-fold. On one hand, the importance of the different kind of cyanobacteria over the presence of cyanotoxins in the reservoir is presented through the MARS model and on the other hand a predictive model able to forecast the possible presence of cyanotoxins in a short term was obtained. The agreement of the MARS model with experimental data confirmed the good performance of the same one. Finally, conclusions of this innovative research are exposed. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

WQEP - a computer spreadsheet program to evaluate water quality data

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Liddle, R.G.

1996-12-31

A flexible spreadsheet Water Quality Evaluation Program (WQEP) has been developed for mining companies, consultants, and regulators to interpret the results of water quality sampling. In order properly to evaluate hydrologic data, unit conversions and chemical calculations are done, quality control checks are needed, and a complete and up-to-date listing of water quality standards is necessary. This process is time consuming and tends not to be done for every sample. This program speeds the process by allowing the input of up to 115 chemical parameters from one sample. WQEP compares concentrations with EPA primary and secondary drinking water MCLs ormore » MCLG, EPA warmwater and Coldwater acute and chronic aquatic life criteria, irrigation criteria, livestock criteria, EPA human health criteria, and several other categories of criteria. The spreadsheet allows the input of State or local water standards of interest. Water quality checks include: anion/cations, TDS{sub m}/TDS{sub c} (where m=measured and c=calculated), EC{sub m}/EC{sub c}, EC{sub m}/ion sums, TDS{sub c}/EC ratio, TDS{sub m}/EC, EC vs. alkalinity, two hardness values, and EC vs. {Sigma} cations. WQEP computes the dissolved transport index of 23 parameters, computes ratios of 26 species for trend analysis, calculates non-carbonate alkalinity to adjust the bicarbonate concentration, and calculates 35 interpretive formulas (pE, SAR, S.I., unionized ammonia, ionized sulfide HS-, pK{sub x} values, etc.). Fingerprinting is conducted by automatic generation of stiff diagrams and ion histograms. Mass loading calculations, mass balance calculations, conversions of concentrations, ionic strength, and the activity coefficient and chemical activity of 33 parameters is calculated. This program allows a speedy and thorough evaluation of water quality data from metal mines, coal mining, and natural surface water systems and has been tested against hand calculations.« less

Conversion of Propellant Grade Picrite to Spherical Nitroguanidine, an Insensitive Filler for Melt-Cast TNT Formulations

DTIC Science & Technology

1991-09-01

problem with the solvent/non-solvent process reported by ICT is the inability to recycle the mother liquors. Apparently "strawberries" or " sea urchins ...inevitable for the foreseeable future. Exceptions could include lower production rate items such as sea mines or missile warheads, or speLfic nunitions where...Leitz Orthomat 35 mm automatic camera on polaroid film type 667, Magnification ranged up to X42. 14K 1* Scanning Electron Microscopy ( SEM ) SEM was

DRR is a teenager

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nagy, George

2008-01-01

The fifteenth anniversary of the first SPIE symposium (titled Character Recognition Technologies) on Document Recognition and Retrieval provides an opportunity to examine DRR's contributions to the development of document technologies. Many of the tools taken for granted today, including workable general purpose OCR, large-scale, semi-automatic forms processing, inter-format table conversion, and text mining, followed research presented at this venue. This occasion also affords an opportunity to offer tribute to the conference organizers and proceedings editors and to the coterie of professionals who regularly participate in DRR.

Examination of Spray-Applied Oxsilan 9810/2 Steel Pretreatment on a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) Vehicle

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-10-01

2 Omitting this pretreatment/conversion coating step was justified because hexavalent chromium - based pretreatments, such as DOD-P-15328 (8...along with the fact that it does not contain chrome (hex or trivalent ), were the criteria for selecting Oxsilan 9310/2 for demonstrating on the...Hexavalent Chromium -Based DOD-P-15328D Wash Primer for MIL-A-46100D High Hard Steel Armor; ARL-TR-3393; U.S. Army Research Laboratory: Aberdeen Proving

Text mining applied to electronic cardiovascular procedure reports to identify patients with trileaflet aortic stenosis and coronary artery disease.

PubMed

Small, Aeron M; Kiss, Daniel H; Zlatsin, Yevgeny; Birtwell, David L; Williams, Heather; Guerraty, Marie A; Han, Yuchi; Anwaruddin, Saif; Holmes, John H; Chirinos, Julio A; Wilensky, Robert L; Giri, Jay; Rader, Daniel J

2017-08-01

Interrogation of the electronic health record (EHR) using billing codes as a surrogate for diagnoses of interest has been widely used for clinical research. However, the accuracy of this methodology is variable, as it reflects billing codes rather than severity of disease, and depends on the disease and the accuracy of the coding practitioner. Systematic application of text mining to the EHR has had variable success for the detection of cardiovascular phenotypes. We hypothesize that the application of text mining algorithms to cardiovascular procedure reports may be a superior method to identify patients with cardiovascular conditions of interest. We adapted the Oracle product Endeca, which utilizes text mining to identify terms of interest from a NoSQL-like database, for purposes of searching cardiovascular procedure reports and termed the tool "PennSeek". We imported 282,569 echocardiography reports representing 81,164 individuals and 27,205 cardiac catheterization reports representing 14,567 individuals from non-searchable databases into PennSeek. We then applied clinical criteria to these reports in PennSeek to identify patients with trileaflet aortic stenosis (TAS) and coronary artery disease (CAD). Accuracy of patient identification by text mining through PennSeek was compared with ICD-9 billing codes. Text mining identified 7115 patients with TAS and 9247 patients with CAD. ICD-9 codes identified 8272 patients with TAS and 6913 patients with CAD. 4346 patients with AS and 6024 patients with CAD were identified by both approaches. A randomly selected sample of 200-250 patients uniquely identified by text mining was compared with 200-250 patients uniquely identified by billing codes for both diseases. We demonstrate that text mining was superior, with a positive predictive value (PPV) of 0.95 compared to 0.53 by ICD-9 for TAS, and a PPV of 0.97 compared to 0.86 for CAD. These results highlight the superiority of text mining algorithms applied to electronic cardiovascular procedure reports in the identification of phenotypes of interest for cardiovascular research. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Potential impact of ZT = 4 thermoelectric materials on solar thermal energy conversion technologies.

PubMed

Xie, Ming; Gruen, Dieter M

2010-11-18

State-of-the-art methodologies for the conversion of solar thermal power to electricity are based on conventional electromagnetic induction techniques. If appropriate ZT = 4 thermoelectric materials were available, it is likely that conversion efficiencies of 30-40% could be achieved. The availability of all solid state electricity generation would be a long awaited development in part because of the elimination of moving parts. This paper presents a preliminary examination of the potential performance of ZT = 4 power generators in comparison with Stirling engines taking into account specific mass, volume and cost as well as system reliability. High-performance thermoelectrics appear to have distinct advantages over magnetic induction technologies.

Applied Swarm-based medicine: collecting decision trees for patterns of algorithms analysis.

PubMed

Panje, Cédric M; Glatzer, Markus; von Rappard, Joscha; Rothermundt, Christian; Hundsberger, Thomas; Zumstein, Valentin; Plasswilm, Ludwig; Putora, Paul Martin

2017-08-16

The objective consensus methodology has recently been applied in consensus finding in several studies on medical decision-making among clinical experts or guidelines. The main advantages of this method are an automated analysis and comparison of treatment algorithms of the participating centers which can be performed anonymously. Based on the experience from completed consensus analyses, the main steps for the successful implementation of the objective consensus methodology were identified and discussed among the main investigators. The following steps for the successful collection and conversion of decision trees were identified and defined in detail: problem definition, population selection, draft input collection, tree conversion, criteria adaptation, problem re-evaluation, results distribution and refinement, tree finalisation, and analysis. This manuscript provides information on the main steps for successful collection of decision trees and summarizes important aspects at each point of the analysis.

Experimental evaluation of coal conversion solid waste residuals. Progress report, August 1-October 31, 1979

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Neufeld, R. D.; Bern, J.; Erdogan, H.

1979-11-15

Activities are underway to investigate basic phenomena that would assist demonstration and commercial sized coal conversion facilities in the environmentally acceptable disposal of process solid waste residuals. The approach taken is to consider only those residuals coming from the conversion technology itself, i.e. from gasification, liquefaction, and hot-clean-up steps as well as residuals from the wastewater treatment train. Residuals from the coal mining and coal grinding steps will not be considered in detail since those materials are being handled in some manner in the private sector. Laboratory evalations have been conducted on solid waste samples of fly ash from anmore » existing Capman gasifier. ASTM-A and EPA-EP leaching procedures have been completed on sieved size fractions of the above wastes. Data indicate that smaller size fractions pose greater contamination potential than do larger size particles with a transition zone occurring at particle sizes of about 0.05 inches in diameter. Ames testing of such residuals is reported. Similar studies are under way with samples of H-Coal solid waste residuals.« less

Social license to operate: case from brazilian mining industry

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Santiago, Ana Lúcia F.; Demajorovic, Jacques; Aledo, Antonio

2015-04-01

The approach of the Social License to Operate (SLO) emerges as an important element in academic discussions and business practices related to extractive industries. It appears that in productive activities with great potential to produce economic, social and environmental impacts, conventional approaches based on legal compliance no longer sufficient to legitimize the actions of companies and engagement stakeholders. Studies highlight the need of mining activities receiving a SLO "issued" by companies stakeholders, including society, government, non-governmental organizations, media and communities. However, local communities appears as major stakeholders in governance arrangements, by virtue of its proximity to extractive areas and ability to affect the company's results. Stakeholders with unmet expectations can generate conflicts and risks to the company, the knowledge of these expectations and an awareness of company managers of the importance of Social License to Operate (SLO), can generate strategies and mitigating actions to prevent and or minimize possible conflicts. The concept of SLO arises in engineering extractive industry, when you need to respond to social challenges, beyond the usual environmental challenges, technological and management. According to Franks and Cohen (2012) there is a tendency of engineering sectors, sustainability, environmental, safety and especially in risk mappings, treat the technological issues in a neutral manner, separating the technological research projects of social influences. I want to contribute to the advancement of the debate on stakeholder engagement and adopting as focus on the company's relationship with the community, the aim of this study was to understand how a social project held by one of the largest mining companies in Brazil contributed to the process of SLO. This methodological procedure adopted was a qualitative, descriptive, and exploratory interviews with the communities located in rural areas of direct influence of the company's approach. The results show that the strategy adopted by the company contributed to the process of SLO, furthermore it is necessary adopt strong methodologies that facilitate the engagement processes of the other company's stakeholders, as well as the challenge to keep on local legitimacy earned. Key words: Mining, social license to operate (SLO), social impact, corporate social responsibility, stakeholders. References: * FRANKS, DANIEL M.; COHEN, TAMAR. Social Licence in Design: Constructive technology assessment within a mineral research and development institution. Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining, Sustainable Minerals Institute, University of Queensland, Australia. 79 122 Technological Forecasting & Social Change. 2012.

Physicochemical and mineralogical characterization of Musina mine copper and New Union gold mine tailings: Implications for fabrication of beneficial geopolymeric construction materials

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gitari, M. W.; Akinyemi, S. A.; Thobakgale, R.; Ngoejana, P. C.; Ramugondo, L.; Matidza, M.; Mhlongo, S. E.; Dacosta, F. A.; Nemapate, N.

2018-01-01

The mining industries in South Africa generates huge amounts of mine waste that includes tailings; waste rocks and spoils. The tailings materials are dumped in surface impoundments that turn to be sources of hazards to the environment and the surrounding communities. The main environmental hazards posed by these tailings facilities are associated with their chemical constituents. Exposure to chemical constituents can occur through windblown dust, erosion to surface water bodies, inhalation by human beings and animals and through bioaccumulation and bio magnification by plants. Numerous un-rehabilitated tailings dumps exist in Limpopo province of South Africa. The communities found around these mines are constantly exposed to the environmental hazards posed by these tailing facilities. Development of a cost-effective technology that can beneficially utilize these tailings can reduce the environmental hazards and benefit the communities. This paper presents the initial evaluation of the copper and gold mine tailings in Limpopo, South Africa with a view to assessing the suitability of conversion into beneficial geopolymeric materials. Copper tailings leachates had alkaline pH (7.34-8.49) while the gold tailings had acidic pH. XRD confirmed presence of aluminosilicate minerals. Geochemical fractionation indicates that majority of the major and trace species are present in residual fraction. A significant amount of Ca, Cu and K was available in the mobile fraction and is expected to be released on tailings contacting aqueous solutions. Results from XRF indicates the tailings are rich in SiO2, Al2O3 and CaO which are the main ingredients in geopolymerization process. The SiO2/Al2O3 ratios indicates the tailings would require blending with Al2O3 rich feedstock for them to develop maximum strength. Moreover, the tailings have particle size in the range of fine sand which indicates potential application as aggregates in conventional brick manufacture.

Exploring virtual mental practice in maintenance task training.

PubMed

Bauerle, Tim; Brnich, Michael J; Navoyski, Jason

- This paper aims to contribute to a general understanding of mental practice by investigating the utility of and participant reaction to a virtual reality maintenance training among underground coal mine first responders. - Researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's Office of Mine Safety and Health Research (OMSHR) developed software to provide opportunities for mine rescue team members to learn to inspect, assemble and test their closed-circuit breathing apparatus and to practice those skills. In total, 31 mine rescue team members utilized OMSHR's BG 4 Benching Trainer software and provided feedback to the development team. After training, participants completed a brief post-training questionnaire, which included demographics, perceived training climate and general training evaluation items. - The results overall indicate a generally positive reaction to and high perceived utility of the BG 4 benching software. In addition, the perceived training climate appears to have an effect on the perceived utility of the mental practice virtual reality game, with benchmen from mines with more positive training climates reporting greater perceived efficacy in the training's ability to prepare trainees for real emergencies. - This paper helps to broaden current applications of mental practice and is one of the few empirical investigations into a non-rehabilitation virtual reality extension of mental practice. This paper also contributes to the growing literature advocating for greater usage of accurate and well-informed mental practice techniques, tools and methodologies, especially for occupational populations with limitations on exposure to hands-on training.

Application of the EVEX resource to event extraction and network construction: Shared Task entry and result analysis

PubMed Central

2015-01-01

Background Modern methods for mining biomolecular interactions from literature typically make predictions based solely on the immediate textual context, in effect a single sentence. No prior work has been published on extending this context to the information automatically gathered from the whole biomedical literature. Thus, our motivation for this study is to explore whether mutually supporting evidence, aggregated across several documents can be utilized to improve the performance of the state-of-the-art event extraction systems. In this paper, we describe our participation in the latest BioNLP Shared Task using the large-scale text mining resource EVEX. We participated in the Genia Event Extraction (GE) and Gene Regulation Network (GRN) tasks with two separate systems. In the GE task, we implemented a re-ranking approach to improve the precision of an existing event extraction system, incorporating features from the EVEX resource. In the GRN task, our system relied solely on the EVEX resource and utilized a rule-based conversion algorithm between the EVEX and GRN formats. Results In the GE task, our re-ranking approach led to a modest performance increase and resulted in the first rank of the official Shared Task results with 50.97% F-score. Additionally, in this paper we explore and evaluate the usage of distributed vector representations for this challenge. In the GRN task, we ranked fifth in the official results with a strict/relaxed SER score of 0.92/0.81 respectively. To try and improve upon these results, we have implemented a novel machine learning based conversion system and benchmarked its performance against the original rule-based system. Conclusions For the GRN task, we were able to produce a gene regulatory network from the EVEX data, warranting the use of such generic large-scale text mining data in network biology settings. A detailed performance and error analysis provides more insight into the relatively low recall rates. In the GE task we demonstrate that both the re-ranking approach and the word vectors can provide slight performance improvement. A manual evaluation of the re-ranking results pinpoints some of the challenges faced in applying large-scale text mining knowledge to event extraction. PMID:26551766

Metal dispersion resulting from mining activities in coastal environments: A pathways approach

USGS Publications Warehouse

Koski, Randolph A.

2012-01-01

Acid rock drainage (ARD) and disposal of tailings that result from mining activities impact coastal areas in many countries. The dispersion of metals from mine sites that are both proximal and distal to the shoreline can be examined using a pathways approach in which physical and chemical processes guide metal transport in the continuum from sources (sulfide minerals) to bioreceptors (marine biota). Large amounts of metals can be physically transported to the coastal environment by intentional or accidental release of sulfide-bearing mine tailings. Oxidation of sulfide minerals results in elevated dissolved metal concentrations in surface waters on land (producing ARD) and in pore waters of submarine tailings. Changes in pH, adsorption by insoluble secondary minerals (e.g., Fe oxyhydroxides), and precipitation of soluble salts (e.g., sulfates) affect dissolved metal fluxes. Evidence for bioaccumulation includes anomalous metal concentrations in bivalves and reef corals, and overlapping Pb isotope ratios for sulfides, shellfish, and seaweed in contaminated environments. Although bioavailability and potential toxicity are, to a large extent, functions of metal speciation, specific uptake pathways, such as adsorption from solution and ingestion of particles, also play important roles. Recent emphasis on broader ecological impacts has led to complementary methodologies involving laboratory toxicity tests and field studies of species richness and diversity.

Metal dispersion resulting from mining activities in coastal environments: a pathways approach

USGS Publications Warehouse

Koski, Randolph A.

2012-01-01

Acid rock drainage (ARD) and disposal of tailings that result from mining activities impact coastal areas in many countries. The dispersion of metals from mine sites that are both proximal and distal to the shoreline can be examined using a pathways approach in which physical and chemical processes guide metal transport in the continuum from sources (sulfide minerals) to bioreceptors (marine biota). Large amounts of metals can be physically transported to the coastal environment by intentional or accidental release of sulfide-bearing mine tailings. Oxidation of sulfide minerals results in elevated dissolved metal concentrations in surface waters on land (producing ARD) and in pore waters of submarine tailings. Changes in pH, adsorption by insoluble secondary minerals (e.g., Fe oxyhydroxides), and precipitation of soluble salts (e.g., sulfates) affect dissolved metal fluxes. Evidence for bioaccumulation includes anomalous metal concentrations in bivalves and reef corals, and overlapping Pb isotope ratios for sulfides, shellfish, and seaweed in contaminated environments. Although bioavailability and potential toxicity are, to a large extent, functions of metal speciation, specific uptake pathways, such as adsorption from solution and ingestion of particles, also play important roles. Recent emphasis on broader ecological impacts has led to complementary methodologies involving laboratory toxicity tests and field studies of species richness and diversity.

Knowledge mining from clinical datasets using rough sets and backpropagation neural network.

PubMed

Nahato, Kindie Biredagn; Harichandran, Khanna Nehemiah; Arputharaj, Kannan

2015-01-01

The availability of clinical datasets and knowledge mining methodologies encourages the researchers to pursue research in extracting knowledge from clinical datasets. Different data mining techniques have been used for mining rules, and mathematical models have been developed to assist the clinician in decision making. The objective of this research is to build a classifier that will predict the presence or absence of a disease by learning from the minimal set of attributes that has been extracted from the clinical dataset. In this work rough set indiscernibility relation method with backpropagation neural network (RS-BPNN) is used. This work has two stages. The first stage is handling of missing values to obtain a smooth data set and selection of appropriate attributes from the clinical dataset by indiscernibility relation method. The second stage is classification using backpropagation neural network on the selected reducts of the dataset. The classifier has been tested with hepatitis, Wisconsin breast cancer, and Statlog heart disease datasets obtained from the University of California at Irvine (UCI) machine learning repository. The accuracy obtained from the proposed method is 97.3%, 98.6%, and 90.4% for hepatitis, breast cancer, and heart disease, respectively. The proposed system provides an effective classification model for clinical datasets.

Text mining a self-report back-translation.

PubMed

Blanch, Angel; Aluja, Anton

2016-06-01

There are several recommendations about the routine to undertake when back translating self-report instruments in cross-cultural research. However, text mining methods have been generally ignored within this field. This work describes a text mining innovative application useful to adapt a personality questionnaire to 12 different languages. The method is divided in 3 different stages, a descriptive analysis of the available back-translated instrument versions, a dissimilarity assessment between the source language instrument and the 12 back-translations, and an item assessment of item meaning equivalence. The suggested method contributes to improve the back-translation process of self-report instruments for cross-cultural research in 2 significant intertwined ways. First, it defines a systematic approach to the back translation issue, allowing for a more orderly and informed evaluation concerning the equivalence of different versions of the same instrument in different languages. Second, it provides more accurate instrument back-translations, which has direct implications for the reliability and validity of the instrument's test scores when used in different cultures/languages. In addition, this procedure can be extended to the back-translation of self-reports measuring psychological constructs in clinical assessment. Future research works could refine the suggested methodology and use additional available text mining tools. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

The use of Data Mining in the categorization of patients with Azoospermia.

PubMed

Mikos, Themistoklis; Maglaveras, Nikolaos; Pantazis, Konstantinos; Goulis, Dimitrios G; Bontis, John N; Papadimas, John

2005-01-01

Data Mining is a relatively new field of Medical Informatics. The aim of this study was to compare Data Mining diagnosis with clinical diagnosis by applying a Data Miner (DM) to a clinical dataset of infertile men with azoospermia. One hundred and forty-seven azoospermic men were clinically classified into four groups: a) obstructive azoospermia (n=63), b) non-obstructive azoospermia (n=71), c) hypergonadotropic hypogonadism (n=2), and d) hypogonadotropic hypogonadism (n=11). The DM (IBM's DB2/Intelligent Miner for Data 6.1) was asked to reproduce a four-cluster model. DM formed four groups of patients: a) eugonadal men with normal testicular volume and normal FSH levels (n=86), b) eugonadal men with significantly reduced testicular volume (median 6.5 cm3) and very high FSH levels (n=29), c) eugonadal men with moderately reduced testicular volume (median 14.5 cm3) and raised FSH levels (n=20), and d) hypogonadal men (n=12). Overall DM concordance rate in hypogonadal men was 92%, in obstructive azoospermia 73%, and in non-obstructive azoospermia 69%. Data Mining produces clinically meaningful results but different from those of the clinical diagnosis. It is possible that the use of large sets of structured and formalised data and continuous evaluation of DM results will generate a useful methodology for the Clinician.

Discriminative and informative features for biomolecular text mining with ensemble feature selection.

PubMed

Van Landeghem, Sofie; Abeel, Thomas; Saeys, Yvan; Van de Peer, Yves

2010-09-15

In the field of biomolecular text mining, black box behavior of machine learning systems currently limits understanding of the true nature of the predictions. However, feature selection (FS) is capable of identifying the most relevant features in any supervised learning setting, providing insight into the specific properties of the classification algorithm. This allows us to build more accurate classifiers while at the same time bridging the gap between the black box behavior and the end-user who has to interpret the results. We show that our FS methodology successfully discards a large fraction of machine-generated features, improving classification performance of state-of-the-art text mining algorithms. Furthermore, we illustrate how FS can be applied to gain understanding in the predictions of a framework for biomolecular event extraction from text. We include numerous examples of highly discriminative features that model either biological reality or common linguistic constructs. Finally, we discuss a number of insights from our FS analyses that will provide the opportunity to considerably improve upon current text mining tools. The FS algorithms and classifiers are available in Java-ML (http://java-ml.sf.net). The datasets are publicly available from the BioNLP'09 Shared Task web site (http://www-tsujii.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/GENIA/SharedTask/).

Multi-rater feedback with gap analysis: an innovative means to assess communication skill and self-insight.

PubMed

Calhoun, Aaron W; Rider, Elizabeth A; Peterson, Eleanor; Meyer, Elaine C

2010-09-01

Multi-rater assessment with gap analysis is a powerful method for assessing communication skills and self-insight, and enhancing self-reflection. We demonstrate the use of this methodology. The Program for the Approach to Complex Encounters (PACE) is an interdisciplinary simulation-based communication skills program. Encounters are assessed using an expanded Kalamazoo Consensus Statement Essential Elements Checklist adapted for multi-rater feedback and gap analysis. Data from a representative conversation were analyzed. Likert and forced-choice data with gap analysis are used to assess performance. Participants were strong in Demonstrating Empathy and Providing Closure, and needed to improve Relationship Building, Gathering Information, and understanding the Patient's/Family's Perspective. Participants under-appraised their abilities in Relationship Building, Providing Closure, and Demonstrating Empathy, as well as their overall performance. The conversion of these results into verbal feedback is discussed. We describe an evaluation methodology using multi-rater assessment with gap analysis to assess communication skills and self-insight. This methodology enables faculty to identify undervalued skills and perceptual blind spots, provide comprehensive, data driven, feedback, and encourage reflection. Implementation of graphical feedback forms coupled with one-on-one discussion using the above methodology has the potential to enhance trainee self-awareness and reflection, improving the impact of educational programs. Copyright (c) 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Total mercury and methylmercury concentrations over a gradient of contamination in earthworms living in rice paddy soil.

PubMed

Abeysinghe, Kasun S; Yang, Xiao-Dong; Goodale, Eben; Anderson, Christopher W N; Bishop, Kevin; Cao, Axiang; Feng, Xinbin; Liu, Shengjie; Mammides, Christos; Meng, Bo; Quan, Rui-Chang; Sun, Jing; Qiu, Guangle

2017-05-01

Mercury (Hg) deposited from emissions or from local contamination, can have serious health effects on humans and wildlife. Traditionally, Hg has been seen as a threat to aquatic wildlife, because of its conversion in suboxic conditions into bioavailable methylmercury (MeHg), but it can also threaten contaminated terrestrial ecosystems. In Asia, rice paddies in particular may be sensitive ecosystems. Earthworms are soil-dwelling organisms that have been used as indicators of Hg bioavailability; however, the MeHg concentrations they accumulate in rice paddy environments are not well known. Earthworm and soil samples were collected from rice paddies at progressive distances from abandoned mercury mines in Guizhou, China, and at control sites without a history of Hg mining. Total Hg (THg) and MeHg concentrations declined in soil and earthworms as distance increased from the mines, but the percentage of THg that was MeHg, and the bioaccumulation factors in earthworms, increased over this gradient. This escalation in methylation and the incursion of MeHg into earthworms may be influenced by more acidic soil conditions and higher organic content further from the mines. In areas where the source of Hg is deposition, especially in water-logged and acidic rice paddy soil, earthworms may biomagnify MeHg more than was previously reported. It is emphasized that rice paddy environments affected by acidifying deposition may be widely dispersed throughout Asia. Environ Toxicol Chem 2017;36:1202-1210. © 2016 SETAC. © 2016 SETAC.

Trace element contents in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in urban school microenvironments near a contaminated beach with mine tailings, Chañaral, Chile.

PubMed

Mesías Monsalve, Stephanie; Martínez, Leonardo; Yohannessen Vásquez, Karla; Alvarado Orellana, Sergio; Klarián Vergara, José; Martín Mateo, Miguel; Costilla Salazar, Rogelio; Fuentes Alburquenque, Mauricio; Cáceres Lillo, Dante D

2018-06-01

Air quality in schools is an important public health issue because children spend a considerable part of their daily life in classrooms. Particulate size and chemical composition has been associated with negative health effects. We studied levels of trace element concentrations in fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) in indoor versus outdoor school settings from six schools in Chañaral, a coastal city with a beach severely polluted with mine tailings. Concentrations of trace elements were measured on two consecutive days during the summer and winter of 2012 and 2013 and determined using X-ray fluorescence. Source apportionment and element enrichment were measured using principal components analysis and enrichment factors. Trace elements were higher in indoor school spaces, especially in classrooms compared with outdoor environments. The most abundant elements were Na, Cl, S, Ca, Fe, K, Mn, Ti, and Si, associated with earth's crust. Conversely, an extremely high enrichment factor was determined for Cu, Zn, Ni and Cr; heavy metals associated with systemic and carcinogenic risk effects, whose probably origin sources are industrial and mining activities. These results suggest that the main source of trace elements in PM 2.5 from these school microenvironments is a mixture of dust contaminated with mine tailings and marine aerosols. Policymakers should prioritize environmental management changes to minimize further environmental damage and its direct impact on the health of children exposed.

Analysis of open-pit mines using high-resolution topography from UAV

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Jianping; Li, Ke; Sofia, Giulia; Tarolli, Paolo

2015-04-01

Among the anthropogenic topographic signatures on the Earth, open-pit mines deserve a great importance, since they significantly affect the Earth's surface and its related processes (e.g. erosion, pollution). Their geomorphological analysis, therefore, represents a real challenge for the Earth science community. The purpose of this research is to characterize the open-pit mining features using a recently published landscape metric, the Slope Local Length of Auto-Correlation (SLLAC) (Sofia et al., 2014), and high-resolution DEMs (Digital Elevation Models) derived from drone surveyed topography. The research focuses on two main case studies of iron mines located in the Beijing district (P.R. China). The main topographic information (Digital Surface Models, DSMs) was derived using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and the Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetric technique. The results underline the effectiveness of the adopted methodologies and survey techniques in the characterization of the main geomorphic features of the mines. Thanks to the SLLAC, the terraced area given by multi-benched sideways-moving method for the iron extraction is automatically depicted, and using some SLLAC derived parameters, the related terraces extent is automatically estimated. The analysis of the correlation length orientation, furthermore, allows to identify the terraces orientation respect to the North, and to understand as well the shape of the open-pit area. This provides a basis for a large scale and low cost topographic survey for a sustainable environmental planning and, for example, for the mitigation of environmental anthropogenic impact due to mining. References Sofia G., Marinello F, Tarolli P. 2014. A new landscape metric for the identification of terraced sites: the Slope Local Length of Auto-Correlation (SLLAC). ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, doi:10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2014.06.018

Holistic assessment of a landfill mining pilot project in Austria: Methodology and application.

PubMed

Hermann, Robert; Baumgartner, Rupert J; Vorbach, Stefan; Wolfsberger, Tanja; Ragossnig, Arne; Pomberger, Roland

2016-07-01

Basic technical and economic examinations of Austrian mass waste landfills, concerning the recovery of secondary raw materials, have been carried out by the 'LAMIS - Landfill Mining Austria' pilot project for the first time in Austria. A main focus of the research - the subject of this article - was the first devotion of a pilot landfill to an integrated ecological and economic assessment so that its feasibility could be verified before a landfill mining project commenced. A Styrian mass waste landfill had been chosen for this purpose that had been put into operation in 1979 and received mechanically-biologically pre-treated municipal waste till 2012. The whole assessment procedure was divided into preliminary and main assessment phases to evaluate the general suitability of a landfill mining project with little financial and human resource expense. A portfolio chart, based on a questionnaire, was created for the preliminary assessment that, as a result, has provided a recommendation for subsequent investigation - the main assessment phase. In this case, specific economic criteria were assessed by net present value calculation, while ecological or socio-economic criteria were rated by utility analysis, transferring the result into a utility-net present value chart. In the case of the examined pilot landfill, assessing the landfill mining project produced a higher utility but a lower net present value than a landfill leaving-in for aftercare. Since no clearly preferable scenario could be identified this way, a cost-revenue analysis was carried out in addition that determined a dimensionless ratio: the 'utility - net present value quotient' of both scenarios. Comparing this quotient showed unmistakably that in the overall assessment, 'leaving the landfill in aftercare' was preferable to a 'landfill mining project' in that specific case. © The Author(s) 2016.

Autistic Traits and Brain Activation during Face-to-Face Conversations in Typically Developed Adults

PubMed Central

Suda, Masashi; Takei, Yuichi; Aoyama, Yoshiyuki; Narita, Kosuke; Sakurai, Noriko; Fukuda, Masato; Mikuni, Masahiko

2011-01-01

Background Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, restricted interests, and repetitive behaviours. The severity of these characteristics is posited to lie on a continuum that extends into the general population. Brain substrates underlying ASD have been investigated through functional neuroimaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). However, fMRI has methodological constraints for studying brain mechanisms during social interactions (for example, noise, lying on a gantry during the procedure, etc.). In this study, we investigated whether variations in autism spectrum traits are associated with changes in patterns of brain activation in typically developed adults. We used near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), a recently developed functional neuroimaging technique that uses near-infrared light, to monitor brain activation in a natural setting that is suitable for studying brain functions during social interactions. Methodology We monitored regional cerebral blood volume changes using a 52-channel NIRS apparatus over the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and superior temporal sulcus (STS), 2 areas implicated in social cognition and the pathology of ASD, in 28 typically developed participants (14 male and 14 female) during face-to-face conversations. This task was designed to resemble a realistic social situation. We examined the correlations of these changes with autistic traits assessed using the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ). Principal Findings Both the PFC and STS were significantly activated during face-to-face conversations. AQ scores were negatively correlated with regional cerebral blood volume increases in the left STS during face-to-face conversations, especially in males. Conclusions Our results demonstrate successful monitoring of brain function during realistic social interactions by NIRS as well as lesser brain activation in the left STS during face-to-face conversations in typically developed participants with higher levels of autistic traits. PMID:21637754

Magnesium carbide synthesis from methane and magnesium oxide - a potential methodology for natural gas conversion to premium fuels and chemicals

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Diaz, A.F.; Modestino, A.J.; Howard, J.B.

1995-12-31

Diversification of the raw materials base for manufacturing premium fuels and chemicals offers U.S. and international consumers economic and strategic benefits. Extensive reserves of natural gas in the world provide a valuable source of clean gaseous fuel and chemical feedstock. Assuming the availability of suitable conversion processes, natural gas offers the prospect of improving flexibility in liquid fuels and chemicals manufacture, and thus, the opportunity to complement, supplement, or displace petroleum-based production as economic and strategic considerations require. The composition of natural gas varies from reservoir to reservoir but the principal hydrocarbon constituent is always methane (CH{sub 4}). With itsmore » high hydrogen-to-carbon ratio, methane has the potential to produce hydrogen or hydrogen-rich products. However, methane is a very chemically stable molecule and, thus, is not readily transformed to other molecules or easily reformed to its elements (H{sub 2} and carbon). In many cases, further research is needed to augment selectivity to desired product(s), increase single-pass conversions, or improve economics (e.g. there have been estimates of $50/bbl or more for liquid products) before the full potential of these methodologies can be realized on a commercial scale. With the trade-off between gas conversion and product selectivity, a major challenge common to many of these technologies is to simultaneously achieve high methane single-pass conversions and high selectivity to desired products. Based on the results of the scoping runs, there appears to be strong indications that a breakthrough has finally been achieved in that synthesis of magnesium carbides from MgO and methane in the arc discharge reactor has been demonstrated.« less

Assessment of Undiscovered Petroleum Resources of Southern and Western Afghanistan, 2009

USGS Publications Warehouse

Wandrey, C.J.; Kosti, Amir Zada; Selab, Amir Mohammad; Omari, Mohammad Karim; Muty, Salam Abdul; Nakshband, Haidari Gulam; Hosine, Abdul Aminulah; Wahab, Abdul; Hamidi, Abdul Wasy; Ahmadi, Nasim; Agena, Warren F.; Charpentier, Ronald R.; Cook, Troy; Drenth, B.J.

2009-01-01

Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey--Afghanistan Ministry of Mines Joint Oil and Gas Resource Assessment Team estimated mean undiscovered resource volumes of 21.55 million barrels of oil, 44.76 billion cubic feet of non-associated natural gas, and 0.91 million barrels of natural gas liquids in the western Afghanistan Tirpul Assessment Unit (AU) (80230101).

Situating Motivation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nolen, Susan Bobbitt; Horn, Ilana Seidel; Ward, Christopher J.

2015-01-01

This article describes a situative approach to studying motivation to learn in social contexts. We begin by contrasting this perspective to more prevalent psychological approaches to the study of motivation, describing epistemological and methodological differences that have constrained conversation between theoretical groups. We elaborate on…

DMET-Miner: Efficient discovery of association rules from pharmacogenomic data.

PubMed

Agapito, Giuseppe; Guzzi, Pietro H; Cannataro, Mario

2015-08-01

Microarray platforms enable the investigation of allelic variants that may be correlated to phenotypes. Among those, the Affymetrix DMET (Drug Metabolism Enzymes and Transporters) platform enables the simultaneous investigation of all the genes that are related to drug absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (ADME). Although recent studies demonstrated the effectiveness of the use of DMET data for studying drug response or toxicity in clinical studies, there is a lack of tools for the automatic analysis of DMET data. In a previous work we developed DMET-Analyzer, a methodology and a supporting platform able to automatize the statistical study of allelic variants, that has been validated in several clinical studies. Although DMET-Analyzer is able to correlate a single variant for each probe (related to a portion of a gene) through the use of the Fisher test, it is unable to discover multiple associations among allelic variants, due to its underlying statistic analysis strategy that focuses on a single variant for each time. To overcome those limitations, here we propose a new analysis methodology for DMET data based on Association Rules mining, and an efficient implementation of this methodology, named DMET-Miner. DMET-Miner extends the DMET-Analyzer tool with data mining capabilities and correlates the presence of a set of allelic variants with the conditions of patient's samples by exploiting association rules. To face the high number of frequent itemsets generated when considering large clinical studies based on DMET data, DMET-Miner uses an efficient data structure and implements an optimized search strategy that reduces the search space and the execution time. Preliminary experiments on synthetic DMET datasets, show how DMET-Miner outperforms off-the-shelf data mining suites such as the FP-Growth algorithms available in Weka and RapidMiner. To demonstrate the biological relevance of the extracted association rules and the effectiveness of the proposed approach from a medical point of view, some preliminary studies on a real clinical dataset are currently under medical investigation. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Extracting nursing practice patterns from structured labor and delivery data sets.

PubMed

Hall, Eric S; Thornton, Sidney N

2007-10-11

This study was designed to demonstrate the feasibility of a computerized care process model that provides real-time case profiling and outcome forecasting. A methodology was defined for extracting nursing practice patterns from structured point-of-care data collected using the labor and delivery information system at Intermountain Healthcare. Data collected during January 2006 were retrieved from Intermountain Healthcare's enterprise data warehouse for use in the study. The knowledge discovery in databases process provided a framework for data analysis including data selection, preprocessing, data-mining, and evaluation. Development of an interactive data-mining tool and construction of a data model for stratification of patient records into profiles supported the goals of the study. Five benefits of the practice pattern extraction capability, which extend to other clinical domains, are listed with supporting examples.

Microbial Ecology and Evolution in the Acid Mine Drainage Model System.

PubMed

Huang, Li-Nan; Kuang, Jia-Liang; Shu, Wen-Sheng

2016-07-01

Acid mine drainage (AMD) is a unique ecological niche for acid- and toxic-metals-adapted microorganisms. These low-complexity systems offer a special opportunity for the ecological and evolutionary analyses of natural microbial assemblages. The last decade has witnessed an unprecedented interest in the study of AMD communities using 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing and community genomic and postgenomic methodologies, significantly advancing our understanding of microbial diversity, community function, and evolution in acidic environments. This review describes new data on AMD microbial ecology and evolution, especially dynamics of microbial diversity, community functions, and population genomes, and further identifies gaps in our current knowledge that future research, with integrated applications of meta-omics technologies, will fill. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Functionality of Triggers for Epilepsy Patients Assessed by Text and Data Mining of Medical and Nursing Records.

PubMed

Kivekäs, Eija; Kinnunen, Ulla-Mari; Paananen, Pekka; Kälviäinen, Reetta; Haatainen, Kaisa; Saranto, Kaija

2016-01-01

A trigger is a powerful tool for identifying adverse events to measure the level of any kind of harm caused in patient care. Studies with epilepsy patients have illustrated that using triggers as a methodology with data mining may increase patient well-being. The purpose of this study is to test the functionality and validity of the previously defined triggers to describe the status of epilepsy patient's well-being. In both medical and nursing data, the triggers described patients' well-being comprehensively. The narratives showed that there was overlapping in triggers. The preliminary results of triggers encourage us to develop some reminders to the documentation of epilepsy patient well-being. These provide healthcare professionals with further and more detailed information when necessary.

Establishment of a Bioenergy-Focused Microalgae Strain Collection Using Rapid, High-Throughput Methodologies: Cooperative Research and Development Final Report

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Pienkos, Philip T.

2013-11-01

This project is part of the overall effort by and among NREL, Colorado State University, University of Colorado, and Colorado School of Mines known as the Colorado Center for Biorefining and Biofuels. This is part of a larger statewide effort provided for in House Bill 06-1322, establishing a Colorado Collaboratory that envisions these four institutions working together as part of the state'senergy plan. This individual project with Colorado School of Mines is the first of many envisioned in this overall effort. The project focuses on development of high throughput procedures aimed at rapidly isolating and purifying novel microalgal strains (specificallymore » green alga and diatoms) from water samples obtained from unique aquatic environments.« less

Computational Psychometrics for the Measurement of Collaborative Problem Solving Skills

PubMed Central

Polyak, Stephen T.; von Davier, Alina A.; Peterschmidt, Kurt

2017-01-01

This paper describes a psychometrically-based approach to the measurement of collaborative problem solving skills, by mining and classifying behavioral data both in real-time and in post-game analyses. The data were collected from a sample of middle school children who interacted with a game-like, online simulation of collaborative problem solving tasks. In this simulation, a user is required to collaborate with a virtual agent to solve a series of tasks within a first-person maze environment. The tasks were developed following the psychometric principles of Evidence Centered Design (ECD) and are aligned with the Holistic Framework developed by ACT. The analyses presented in this paper are an application of an emerging discipline called computational psychometrics which is growing out of traditional psychometrics and incorporates techniques from educational data mining, machine learning and other computer/cognitive science fields. In the real-time analysis, our aim was to start with limited knowledge of skill mastery, and then demonstrate a form of continuous Bayesian evidence tracing that updates sub-skill level probabilities as new conversation flow event evidence is presented. This is performed using Bayes' rule and conversation item conditional probability tables. The items are polytomous and each response option has been tagged with a skill at a performance level. In our post-game analysis, our goal was to discover unique gameplay profiles by performing a cluster analysis of user's sub-skill performance scores based on their patterns of selected dialog responses. PMID:29238314

Computational Psychometrics for the Measurement of Collaborative Problem Solving Skills.

PubMed

Polyak, Stephen T; von Davier, Alina A; Peterschmidt, Kurt

2017-01-01

This paper describes a psychometrically-based approach to the measurement of collaborative problem solving skills, by mining and classifying behavioral data both in real-time and in post-game analyses. The data were collected from a sample of middle school children who interacted with a game-like, online simulation of collaborative problem solving tasks. In this simulation, a user is required to collaborate with a virtual agent to solve a series of tasks within a first-person maze environment. The tasks were developed following the psychometric principles of Evidence Centered Design (ECD) and are aligned with the Holistic Framework developed by ACT. The analyses presented in this paper are an application of an emerging discipline called computational psychometrics which is growing out of traditional psychometrics and incorporates techniques from educational data mining, machine learning and other computer/cognitive science fields. In the real-time analysis, our aim was to start with limited knowledge of skill mastery, and then demonstrate a form of continuous Bayesian evidence tracing that updates sub-skill level probabilities as new conversation flow event evidence is presented. This is performed using Bayes' rule and conversation item conditional probability tables. The items are polytomous and each response option has been tagged with a skill at a performance level. In our post-game analysis, our goal was to discover unique gameplay profiles by performing a cluster analysis of user's sub-skill performance scores based on their patterns of selected dialog responses.

Integration of vertical and in-seam horizontal well production analyses with stochastic geostatistical algorithms to estimate pre-mining methane drainage efficiency from coal seams: Blue Creek seam, Alabama

PubMed Central

Karacan, C. Özgen

2015-01-01

Coal seam degasification and its efficiency are directly related to the safety of coal mining. Degasification activities in the Black Warrior basin started in the early 1980s by using vertical boreholes. Although the Blue Creek seam, which is part of the Mary Lee coal group, has been the main seam of interest for coal mining, vertical wellbores have also been completed in the Pratt, Mary Lee, and Black Creek coal groups of the Upper Pottsville formation to degasify multiple seams. Currently, the Blue Creek seam is further degasified 2–3 years in advance of mining using in-seam horizontal boreholes to ensure safe mining. The studied location in this work is located between Tuscaloosa and Jefferson counties in Alabama and was degasified using 81 vertical boreholes, some of which are still active. When the current long mine expanded its operation into this area in 2009, horizontal boreholes were also drilled in advance of mining for further degasification of only the Blue Creek seam to ensure a safe and a productive operation. This paper presents an integrated study and a methodology to combine history matching results from vertical boreholes with production modeling of horizontal boreholes using geostatistical simulation to evaluate spatial effectiveness of in-seam boreholes in reducing gas-in-place (GIP). Results in this study showed that in-seam wells' boreholes had an estimated effective drainage area of 2050 acres with cumulative production of 604 MMscf methane during ~2 years of operation. With horizontal borehole production, GIP in the Blue Creek seam decreased from an average of 1.52 MMscf to 1.23 MMscf per acre. It was also shown that effective gas flow capacity, which was independently modeled using vertical borehole data, affected horizontal borehole production. GIP and effective gas flow capacity of coal seam gas were also used to predict remaining gas potential for the Blue Creek seam. PMID:26435557

Integration of vertical and in-seam horizontal well production analyses with stochastic geostatistical algorithms to estimate pre-mining methane drainage efficiency from coal seams: Blue Creek seam, Alabama.

PubMed

Karacan, C Özgen

2013-07-30

Coal seam degasification and its efficiency are directly related to the safety of coal mining. Degasification activities in the Black Warrior basin started in the early 1980s by using vertical boreholes. Although the Blue Creek seam, which is part of the Mary Lee coal group, has been the main seam of interest for coal mining, vertical wellbores have also been completed in the Pratt, Mary Lee, and Black Creek coal groups of the Upper Pottsville formation to degasify multiple seams. Currently, the Blue Creek seam is further degasified 2-3 years in advance of mining using in-seam horizontal boreholes to ensure safe mining. The studied location in this work is located between Tuscaloosa and Jefferson counties in Alabama and was degasified using 81 vertical boreholes, some of which are still active. When the current long mine expanded its operation into this area in 2009, horizontal boreholes were also drilled in advance of mining for further degasification of only the Blue Creek seam to ensure a safe and a productive operation. This paper presents an integrated study and a methodology to combine history matching results from vertical boreholes with production modeling of horizontal boreholes using geostatistical simulation to evaluate spatial effectiveness of in-seam boreholes in reducing gas-in-place (GIP). Results in this study showed that in-seam wells' boreholes had an estimated effective drainage area of 2050 acres with cumulative production of 604 MMscf methane during ~2 years of operation. With horizontal borehole production, GIP in the Blue Creek seam decreased from an average of 1.52 MMscf to 1.23 MMscf per acre. It was also shown that effective gas flow capacity, which was independently modeled using vertical borehole data, affected horizontal borehole production. GIP and effective gas flow capacity of coal seam gas were also used to predict remaining gas potential for the Blue Creek seam.

Improving surface stability of elevated spoil landforms using natural landform analogy and geological information

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Emmerton, Bevan; Burgess, Jon; Esterle, Joan; Erskine, Peter; Baumgartl, Thomas

2017-04-01

Large-scale open cut mining in the Bowen Basin, Queensland, Australia has undergone an evolutionary process over the period of a few decades, transitioning from shallow mining depths, limited spoil elevation and pasture based rehabilitation to increased mining depths, escalating pre-stripping, elevated mesa-like landforms and native woody species rehabilitation. As a consequence of this development, the stabilisation of recent constructed landforms has to be assured through means other than the establishment of vegetative cover. Recent developments are the specific selection and partitioning of resilient fragmental spoil types for the construction of final landform surface. They can also be used as cladding resources for stabilizing steep erosive batters and this has been identified as a practical methodology that has the potential to significantly improve rehabilitation outcomes. Examples of improvements are an increase of the surface rock cover, roughness and infiltration and reducing inherent erodibility and runoff and velocity of surface flow. However, a thorough understanding of the properties and behavior of individual spoil materials disturbed during mining is required. Relevant information from published literature on the geological origins, lithology and weathering characteristics of individual strata within the Bowen Basin Coal Measures located in Queensland, Australia (and younger overlying weathered strata) has been studied, and related both to natural landforms and to the surface stability of major strata types when disturbed by mining. The resulting spoil classification developed from this study is based primarily on inherent geological characteristics and weathering behaviour of identifiable lithologic components, and as such describes the expected fragmental resilience likely within disturbed materials at Bowen Basin coal mines. The proposed classification system allows the allocation of spoil types to use categories which have application in pre-mine feasibility investigations, landform design and material selection and placement. It finds its application by practitioners who find encouragement in using this approach of a relatively easy usable classification system to improve the overall outcome of rehabilitation through selection of optimal substrates.

Geochemical mapping of polluted soils and environmental risk assessment associated to mining activities: a comparison case study in El Campillo (Huelva, Spain) and the Zambales (Luzon Island,The Philippines)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zuluaga, Maria Clara; Albanese, Stefano; de Vivo, Benedetto; Nieto, Jose Miguel; David, Carlos Primo C.; Norini, Gianluca

2014-05-01

The soil is one of the environmental systems which could be most affected by the dispersion of pollutant, also because of the close relationship with the atmosphere and meteoric waters. The distribution and type of contamination depends closely on the climate, precipitations, drainage, vegetation, lithology and human activities. As a matter of fact, soil contamination due to heavy metals and metalloids, such as As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn, represents the source of a severe potential hazard for the ecosystem equilibrium and the health of living beings. This study is carried out in two abandoned mining zones near to populated areas, which underwent similar mining history, but in very different climatic and environmental conditions. The aim of the research is to analyze the influence of precipitation amounts, soil thickness, drainage density and vegetation cover on pollutant distribution. The first zone is in El Campillo, a town at the Rio Tinto mining district and belongs to the Iberic Pyritic Belt of the southwest Iberian peninsula. This mining site is characterized by a Mediterranean climate with low precipitation (700 mm/year), low vegetation cover and poor soil development. The second case study is the Zambales Mountain Range, a mining district in the Luzon Island of the Philippines dominated by a tropical weather, forests, intense rainfalls (2350 mm/year) and good soil development. The wide spectrum of climatic variables in the case studies requires to develop a single flexible methodology for the mapping and monitoring of the environmental degradation in both semi-arid and tropical environments, allowing comparative studies. The methodological approach comprises remote sensing, Geographic Information System (GIS), spatial statistical analysis, field sampling, ICP analysis and isotopic geochemical analysis. The presentation illustrates the first stage of the project. The processing of multispectral (Aster) and hyperspectral (Hyperion) images, in comparison with available geological and geochemical data, is used to search for spectral indicators of specific pollutant or anomalies in the vegetation cover related to soil contamination. Then, digital elevation models (DEMs) are used to delineate the drainage and superficial flow and to find potential correlations with the remobilization and dispersion of the pollutant in the soils, sediments and water bodies. These results allow a first comparison between the case studies, and delineate the different behavior of pollutants dispersion in the two climatic end-members. Also the remote sensing and GIS analysis form the basis to plan the future soil and sediment sampling campaign, according to the specific characteristics of the areas. The field, remote sensing and ICP data will be integrated in a GIS database for spatial geostatistical analysis. Those analysis will be complemented with the lead isotopic analysis of soil samples and human hair samples collected from the people who lives close to the mining zones, in order to determine the origin of the lead from the isotopic composition.

Geovisualization of Local and Regional Migration Using Web-mined Demographics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schuermann, R. T.; Chow, T. E.

2014-11-01

The intent of this research was to augment and facilitate analyses, which gauges the feasibility of web-mined demographics to study spatio-temporal dynamics of migration. As a case study, we explored the spatio-temporal dynamics of Vietnamese Americans (VA) in Texas through geovisualization of mined demographic microdata from the World Wide Web. Based on string matching across all demographic attributes, including full name, address, date of birth, age and phone number, multiple records of the same entity (i.e. person) over time were resolved and reconciled into a database. Migration trajectories were geovisualized through animated sprites by connecting the different addresses associated with the same person and segmenting the trajectory into small fragments. Intra-metropolitan migration patterns appeared at the local scale within many metropolitan areas. At the scale of metropolitan area, varying degrees of immigration and emigration manifest different types of migration clusters. This paper presents a methodology incorporating GIS methods and cartographic design to produce geovisualization animation, enabling the cognitive identification of migration patterns at multiple scales. Identification of spatio-temporal patterns often stimulates further research to better understand the phenomenon and enhance subsequent modeling.

Differential Diagnosis of Erythmato-Squamous Diseases Using Classification and Regression Tree.

PubMed

Maghooli, Keivan; Langarizadeh, Mostafa; Shahmoradi, Leila; Habibi-Koolaee, Mahdi; Jebraeily, Mohamad; Bouraghi, Hamid

2016-10-01

Differential diagnosis of Erythmato-Squamous Diseases (ESD) is a major challenge in the field of dermatology. The ESD diseases are placed into six different classes. Data mining is the process for detection of hidden patterns. In the case of ESD, data mining help us to predict the diseases. Different algorithms were developed for this purpose. we aimed to use the Classification and Regression Tree (CART) to predict differential diagnosis of ESD. we used the Cross Industry Standard Process for Data Mining (CRISP-DM) methodology. For this purpose, the dermatology data set from machine learning repository, UCI was obtained. The Clementine 12.0 software from IBM Company was used for modelling. In order to evaluation of the model we calculate the accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of the model. The proposed model had an accuracy of 94.84% (. 24.42) in order to correct prediction of the ESD disease. Results indicated that using of this classifier could be useful. But, it would be strongly recommended that the combination of machine learning methods could be more useful in terms of prediction of ESD.

Mining Bug Databases for Unidentified Software Vulnerabilities

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Dumidu Wijayasekara; Milos Manic; Jason Wright

2012-06-01

Identifying software vulnerabilities is becoming more important as critical and sensitive systems increasingly rely on complex software systems. It has been suggested in previous work that some bugs are only identified as vulnerabilities long after the bug has been made public. These vulnerabilities are known as hidden impact vulnerabilities. This paper discusses the feasibility and necessity to mine common publicly available bug databases for vulnerabilities that are yet to be identified. We present bug database analysis of two well known and frequently used software packages, namely Linux kernel and MySQL. It is shown that for both Linux and MySQL, amore » significant portion of vulnerabilities that were discovered for the time period from January 2006 to April 2011 were hidden impact vulnerabilities. It is also shown that the percentage of hidden impact vulnerabilities has increased in the last two years, for both software packages. We then propose an improved hidden impact vulnerability identification methodology based on text mining bug databases, and conclude by discussing a few potential problems faced by such a classifier.« less

Analysis of occupational health hazards and associated risks in fuzzy environment: a case research in an Indian underground coal mine.

PubMed

Samantra, Chitrasen; Datta, Saurav; Mahapatra, Siba Sankar

2017-09-01

This paper presents a unique hierarchical structure on various occupational health hazards including physical, chemical, biological, ergonomic and psychosocial hazards, and associated adverse consequences in relation to an underground coal mine. The study proposes a systematic health hazard risk assessment methodology for estimating extent of hazard risk using three important measuring parameters: consequence of exposure, period of exposure and probability of exposure. An improved decision making method using fuzzy set theory has been attempted herein for converting linguistic data into numeric risk ratings. The concept of 'centre of area' method for generalized triangular fuzzy numbers has been explored to quantify the 'degree of hazard risk' in terms of crisp ratings. Finally, a logical framework for categorizing health hazards into different risk levels has been constructed on the basis of distinguished ranges of evaluated risk ratings (crisp). Subsequently, an action requirement plan has been suggested, which could provide guideline to the managers for successfully managing health hazard risks in the context of underground coal mining exercise.

Towards a System Combining SAR and Optical Sentinel Data to Monitor Gold Mining in the Guiana Shield

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rahm, Mathieu; Lardeux, Cedric; Frison, Pierre-Louis; Bedeau, Caroline; Crabbe, Sarah; Svensson, Sara; Hardjoprajitno, Mercedes; Moe soe Let, Valentien; Miranda, Pricilla; Paloeng, Consuela; Kasanpawiro, Cindyrella; Smartt, Towana; Totaram, Jasmin; Funi, Claudia; Farias, Patrick; Lauger, Anthony

2016-08-01

Included in the Guiana Shield ecosystem which is one of the largest blocks of intact tropical forest worldwide, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana and the Brazilian state of Amapá play a critical role in mitigating climate change, preserving biodiversity and regulating water of the Amazon basin. Under low pressure in the past, degradation of this fragile ecosystem is growing, especially driven by gold mining activities.The REDD+ for the Guiana Shield project developed a method involving each country in data production to monitor the impact of this activity on the forest cover and freshwater at the regional level. This paper presents the data and methodology that were used to quantify the impact on the forest cover. It discusses the results of three reference years (2001, 2008 and 2014) which confirmed the alarming expansion of gold mining in the region. Furthermore, the paper shows the results of innovative methods combining the use of optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite data on pilot sites to improve the efficiency of future monitoring.

Virtual Observatories, Data Mining, and Astroinformatics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Borne, Kirk

The historical, current, and future trends in knowledge discovery from data in astronomy are presented here. The story begins with a brief history of data gathering and data organization. A description of the development ofnew information science technologies for astronomical discovery is then presented. Among these are e-Science and the virtual observatory, with its data discovery, access, display, and integration protocols; astroinformatics and data mining for exploratory data analysis, information extraction, and knowledge discovery from distributed data collections; new sky surveys' databases, including rich multivariate observational parameter sets for large numbers of objects; and the emerging discipline of data-oriented astronomical research, called astroinformatics. Astroinformatics is described as the fourth paradigm of astronomical research, following the three traditional research methodologies: observation, theory, and computation/modeling. Astroinformatics research areas include machine learning, data mining, visualization, statistics, semantic science, and scientific data management.Each of these areas is now an active research discipline, with significantscience-enabling applications in astronomy. Research challenges and sample research scenarios are presented in these areas, in addition to sample algorithms for data-oriented research. These information science technologies enable scientific knowledge discovery from the increasingly large and complex data collections in astronomy. The education and training of the modern astronomy student must consequently include skill development in these areas, whose practitioners have traditionally been limited to applied mathematicians, computer scientists, and statisticians. Modern astronomical researchers must cross these traditional discipline boundaries, thereby borrowing the best of breed methodologies from multiple disciplines. In the era of large sky surveys and numerous large telescopes, the potential for astronomical discovery is equally large, and so the data-oriented research methods, algorithms, and techniques that are presented here will enable the greatest discovery potential from the ever-growing data and information resources in astronomy.

jCompoundMapper: An open source Java library and command-line tool for chemical fingerprints

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Background The decomposition of a chemical graph is a convenient approach to encode information of the corresponding organic compound. While several commercial toolkits exist to encode molecules as so-called fingerprints, only a few open source implementations are available. The aim of this work is to introduce a library for exactly defined molecular decompositions, with a strong focus on the application of these features in machine learning and data mining. It provides several options such as search depth, distance cut-offs, atom- and pharmacophore typing. Furthermore, it provides the functionality to combine, to compare, or to export the fingerprints into several formats. Results We provide a Java 1.6 library for the decomposition of chemical graphs based on the open source Chemistry Development Kit toolkit. We reimplemented popular fingerprinting algorithms such as depth-first search fingerprints, extended connectivity fingerprints, autocorrelation fingerprints (e.g. CATS2D), radial fingerprints (e.g. Molprint2D), geometrical Molprint, atom pairs, and pharmacophore fingerprints. We also implemented custom fingerprints such as the all-shortest path fingerprint that only includes the subset of shortest paths from the full set of paths of the depth-first search fingerprint. As an application of jCompoundMapper, we provide a command-line executable binary. We measured the conversion speed and number of features for each encoding and described the composition of the features in detail. The quality of the encodings was tested using the default parametrizations in combination with a support vector machine on the Sutherland QSAR data sets. Additionally, we benchmarked the fingerprint encodings on the large-scale Ames toxicity benchmark using a large-scale linear support vector machine. The results were promising and could often compete with literature results. On the large Ames benchmark, for example, we obtained an AUC ROC performance of 0.87 with a reimplementation of the extended connectivity fingerprint. This result is comparable to the performance achieved by a non-linear support vector machine using state-of-the-art descriptors. On the Sutherland QSAR data set, the best fingerprint encodings showed a comparable or better performance on 5 of the 8 benchmarks when compared against the results of the best descriptors published in the paper of Sutherland et al. Conclusions jCompoundMapper is a library for chemical graph fingerprints with several tweaking possibilities and exporting options for open source data mining toolkits. The quality of the data mining results, the conversion speed, the LPGL software license, the command-line interface, and the exporters should be useful for many applications in cheminformatics like benchmarks against literature methods, comparison of data mining algorithms, similarity searching, and similarity-based data mining. PMID:21219648

Pharmacologic conversion of atrial fibrillation: a systematic review of available evidence.

PubMed

Slavik, R S; Tisdale, J E; Borzak, S

2001-01-01

This report reviews the efficacy of currently available antiarrhythmic agents for conversion of atrial fibrilation (AF) to normal sinus rhythm (NSR). A systematic search of literature in the English language was done on computerized databases, such as MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Current Contents, in reference lists, by manual searching, and in contact with expert informants. Published studies involving humans that described the use of antiarrhythmic therapy for conversion of AF to NSR were considered and only studies that examined the use of agents currently available in the United States were included. Studies exclusively describing antiarrhythmic therapy for conversion of postsurgical AF were excluded. The methodology and results of each trial were assessed and attempts were made to acquire additional information from investigators when needed. Assessment of methodological quality was incorporated into a levels-of-evidence scheme. Eighty-eight trials were included, of which 34 (39%) included a placebo group (level I data). We found in recent-onset AF of less than 7 days, intravenous (i.v.) procainamide, high-dose i.v. or high-dose combination i.v. and oral amiodarone, oral quinidine, oral flecainide, oral propafenone, and high-dose oral amiodarone are more effective than placebo for converting AF to NSR. In recent-onset AF of less than 90 days, i.v. ibutilide is more effective than placebo and i.v. procainamide. In chronic AF, oral dofetilide converts AF to NSR within 72 hours, and oral propafenone and amiodarone are effective after 30 days of therapy. We conclude than for conversion of recent-onset AF of less than 7 days, procainamide may be considered a preferred i.v. agent and propafenone a preferred oral agent. For conversion of recent-onset AF of longer duration (less than 90 days), i.v. ibutilide may be considered a preferred agent. For patients with chronic AF and left ventricular dysfunction, direct current cardioversion is the preferred conversion method. Larger, well-designed randomized controlled trials with clinically important endpoints in specific populations of AF patients are needed. Copyright 2001 by W.B. Saunders Company

Mining data from hemodynamic simulations for generating prediction and explanation models.

PubMed

Bosnić, Zoran; Vračar, Petar; Radović, Milos D; Devedžić, Goran; Filipović, Nenad D; Kononenko, Igor

2012-03-01

One of the most common causes of human death is stroke, which can be caused by carotid bifurcation stenosis. In our work, we aim at proposing a prototype of a medical expert system that could significantly aid medical experts to detect hemodynamic abnormalities (increased artery wall shear stress). Based on the acquired simulated data, we apply several methodologies for1) predicting magnitudes and locations of maximum wall shear stress in the artery, 2) estimating reliability of computed predictions, and 3) providing user-friendly explanation of the model's decision. The obtained results indicate that the evaluated methodologies can provide a useful tool for the given problem domain. © 2012 IEEE

Safety evaluation methodology for advanced coal extraction systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Zimmerman, W. F.

1981-01-01

Qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods for coal extraction systems were developed. The analysis examines the soundness of the design, whether or not the major hazards have been eliminated or reduced, and how the reduction would be accomplished. The quantitative methodology establishes the approximate impact of hazards on injury levels. The results are weighted by peculiar geological elements, specialized safety training, peculiar mine environmental aspects, and reductions in labor force. The outcome is compared with injury level requirements based on similar, safer industries to get a measure of the new system's success in reducing injuries. This approach provides a more detailed and comprehensive analysis of hazards and their effects than existing safety analyses.

Data mining for the analysis of hippocampal zones in Alzheimer's disease

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ovando Vázquez, Cesaré M.

2012-02-01

In this work, a methodology to classify people with Alzheimer's Disease (AD), Healthy Controls (HC) and people with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is presented. This methodology consists of an ensemble of Support Vector Machines (SVM) with the hippocampal boxes (HB) as input data, these hippocampal zones are taken from Magnetic Resonance (MRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) images. Two ways of constructing this ensemble are presented, the first consists of linear SVM models and the second of non-linear SVM models. Results demonstrate that the linear models classify HBs more accurately than the non-linear models between HC and MCI and that there are no differences between HC and AD.

Machine learning classification of medication adherence in patients with movement disorders using non-wearable sensors.

PubMed

Tucker, Conrad S; Behoora, Ishan; Nembhard, Harriet Black; Lewis, Mechelle; Sterling, Nicholas W; Huang, Xuemei

2015-11-01

Medication non-adherence is a major concern in the healthcare industry and has led to increases in health risks and medical costs. For many neurological diseases, adherence to medication regimens can be assessed by observing movement patterns. However, physician observations are typically assessed based on visual inspection of movement and are limited to clinical testing procedures. Consequently, medication adherence is difficult to measure when patients are away from the clinical setting. The authors propose a data mining driven methodology that uses low cost, non-wearable multimodal sensors to model and predict patients' adherence to medication protocols, based on variations in their gait. The authors conduct a study involving Parkinson's disease patients that are "on" and "off" their medication in order to determine the statistical validity of the methodology. The data acquired can then be used to quantify patients' adherence while away from the clinic. Accordingly, this data-driven system may allow for early warnings regarding patient safety. Using whole-body movement data readings from the patients, the authors were able to discriminate between PD patients on and off medication, with accuracies greater than 97% for some patients using an individually customized model and accuracies of 78% for a generalized model containing multiple patient gait data. The proposed methodology and study demonstrate the potential and effectiveness of using low cost, non-wearable hardware and data mining models to monitor medication adherence outside of the traditional healthcare facility. These innovations may allow for cost effective, remote monitoring of treatment of neurological diseases. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Machine Learning Classification of Medication Adherence in Patients with Movement Disorders Using Non-Wearable Sensors

PubMed Central

Tucker, Conrad; Behoora, Ishan; Nembhard, Harriet Black; Lewis, Mechelle; Sterling, Nicholas W; Huang, Xuemei

2017-01-01

Medication non-adherence is a major concern in the healthcare industry and has led to increases in health risks and medical costs. For many neurological diseases, adherence to medication regimens can be assessed by observing movement patterns. However, physician observations are typically assessed based on visual inspection of movement and are limited to clinical testing procedures. Consequently, medication adherence is difficult to measure when patients are away from the clinical setting. The authors propose a data mining driven methodology that uses low cost, non-wearable multimodal sensors to model and predict patients’ adherence to medication protocols, based on variations in their gait. The authors conduct a study involving Parkinson’s Disease patients that are “on” and “off” their medication in order to determine the statistical validity of the methodology. The data acquired can then be used to quantify patients’ adherence while away from the clinic. Accordingly, this data-driven system may allow for early warnings regarding patient safety. Using whole-body movement data readings from the patients, the authors were able to discriminate between PD patients on and off medication, with accuracies greater than 97% for some patients using an individually customized model and accuracies of 78% for a generalized model containing multiple patient gait data. The proposed methodology and study demonstrate the potential and effectiveness of using low cost, non-wearable hardware and data mining models to monitor medication adherence outside of the traditional healthcare facility. These innovations may allow for cost effective, remote monitoring of treatment of neurological diseases. PMID:26406881

Assessment of critical minerals: Updated application of an early-warning screening methodology

USGS Publications Warehouse

McCullough, Erin A.; Nassar, Nedal

2017-01-01

Increasing reliance on non-renewable mineral resources reinforces the need for identifying potential supply constraints before they occur. The US National Science and Technology Council recently released a report that outlines a methodology for screening potentially critical minerals based on three indicators: supply risk (R), production growth (G), and market dynamics (M). This early-warning screening was initially applied to 78 minerals across the years 1996 to 2013 and identified a subset of minerals as “potentially critical” based on the geometric average of these indicators—designated as criticality potential (C). In this study, the screening methodology has been updated to include data for 2014, as well as to incorporate revisions and modifications to the data, where applicable. Overall, C declined in 2014 for the majority of minerals examined largely due to decreases in production concentration and price volatility. However, the results vary considerably across minerals, with some minerals, such as gallium, recording increases for all three indicators. In addition to assessing magnitudinal changes, this analysis also examines the significance of the change relative to historical variation for each mineral. For example, although mined nickel’s R declined modestly in 2014 in comparison to that of other minerals, it was by far the largest annual change recorded for mined nickel across all years examined and is attributable to Indonesia’s ban on the export of unprocessed minerals. Based on the 2014 results, 20 minerals with the highest C values have been identified for further study including the rare earths, gallium, germanium, rhodium, tantalum, and tungsten.

Nanostructure enzyme assemblies for biomass conversion

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Biomass represents a vast resource for production of the world’s fuel and chemical feedstock needs. The use of enzymes to effect these bioconversions offers an alternative that is potentially more specific and environmentally-friendly than harsher chemical methodologies. Some species of anaerobic ...

Evaluation of life cycle impacts of intersection control type selection [final report].

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2016-05-05

The methodology provided in this report provides guidance for NCDOT conversions of twoway : stop controlled intersections to other intersection types to enhance the effective allocation of : public funds. The findings of this project have been inc...

Rapid and Efficient Conversion of (11) CO2 to (11) CO through Silacarboxylic Acids: Applications in Pd-Mediated Carbonylations.

PubMed

Nordeman, Patrik; Friis, Stig D; Andersen, Thomas L; Audrain, Hélène; Larhed, Mats; Skrydstrup, Troels; Antoni, Gunnar

2015-12-01

Herein, we present a new rapid, efficient, and low-cost radiosynthetic protocol for the conversion of (11) CO2 to (11) CO and its subsequent application in Pd-mediated reactions of importance for PET applications. This room-temperature methodology, using readily available chemical reagents, is carried out in simple glass vials, thus eliminating the need for expensive and specialized high-temperature equipment to access (11) CO. With this fast and near-quantitative conversion of (11) CO2 into (11) CO, aryl and heteroaryl iodides were easily converted into a broad selection of biologically active amides in radiochemical yields ranging from 29-84 %. © 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

The Ocean Carbon States Database: A Proof-of-Concept Application of Cluster Analysis in the Ocean Carbon Cycle

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Latto, Rebecca; Romanou, Anastasia

2018-01-01

In this paper, we present a database of the basic regimes of the carbon cycle in the ocean, the 'ocean carbon states', as obtained using a data mining/pattern recognition technique in observation-based as well as model data. The goal of this study is to establish a new data analysis methodology, test it and assess its utility in providing more insights into the regional and temporal variability of the marine carbon cycle. This is important as advanced data mining techniques are becoming widely used in climate and Earth sciences and in particular in studies of the global carbon cycle, where the interaction of physical and biogeochemical drivers confounds our ability to accurately describe, understand, and predict CO2 concentrations and their changes in the major planetary carbon reservoirs. In this proof-of-concept study, we focus on using well-understood data that are based on observations, as well as model results from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) climate model. Our analysis shows that ocean carbon states are associated with the subtropical-subpolar gyre during the colder months of the year and the tropics during the warmer season in the North Atlantic basin. Conversely, in the Southern Ocean, the ocean carbon states can be associated with the subtropical and Antarctic convergence zones in the warmer season and the coastal Antarctic divergence zone in the colder season. With respect to model evaluation, we find that the GISS model reproduces the cold and warm season regimes more skillfully in the North Atlantic than in the Southern Ocean and matches the observed seasonality better than the spatial distribution of the regimes. Finally, the ocean carbon states provide useful information in the model error attribution. Model air-sea CO2 flux biases in the North Atlantic stem from wind speed and salinity biases in the subpolar region and nutrient and wind speed biases in the subtropics and tropics. Nutrient biases are shown to be most important in the Southern Ocean flux bias.

Visualising Conversation Structure across Time: Insights into Effective Doctor-Patient Consultations

PubMed Central

Angus, Daniel; Watson, Bernadette; Smith, Andrew; Gallois, Cindy; Wiles, Janet

2012-01-01

Effective communication between healthcare professionals and patients is critical to patients’ health outcomes. The doctor/patient dialogue has been extensively researched from different perspectives, with findings emphasising a range of behaviours that lead to effective communication. Much research involves self-reports, however, so that behavioural engagement cannot be disentangled from patients’ ratings of effectiveness. In this study we used a highly efficient and time economic automated computer visualisation measurement technique called Discursis to analyse conversational behaviour in consultations. Discursis automatically builds an internal language model from a transcript, mines the transcript for its conceptual content, and generates an interactive visual account of the discourse. The resultant visual account of the whole consultation can be analysed for patterns of engagement between interactants. The findings from this study show that Discursis is effective at highlighting a range of consultation techniques, including communication accommodation, engagement and repetition. PMID:22693629

Massive Social Network Analysis: Mining Twitter for Social Good

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Ediger, David; Jiang, Karl; Riedy, Edward J.

Social networks produce an enormous quantity of data. Facebook consists of over 400 million active users sharing over 5 billion pieces of information each month. Analyzing this vast quantity of unstructured data presents challenges for software and hardware. We present GraphCT, a Graph Characterization Tooklit for massive graphs representing social network data. On a 128-processor Cray XMT, GraphCT estimates the betweenness centrality of an artificially generated (R-MAT) 537 million vertex, 8.6 billion edge graph in 55 minutes. We use GraphCT to analyze public data from Twitter, a microblogging network. Twitter's message connections appear primarily tree-structured as a news dissemination system.more » Within the public data, however, are clusters of conversations. Using GraphCT, we can rank actors within these conversations and help analysts focus attention on a much smaller data subset.« less

The mineral treasure that almost got away: Re-evaluating yesterday's mine waste

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Högdahl, K.; Jonsson, E.; Troll, V.; Majka, J.

2012-04-01

Rare metals and semi-metals such as In, Ga, Se, Te and rare earth elements (REE) are increasing in demand for use in "new" and "green" technology. Yet, before the end of the 20th century the applications and thus the markets for these elements were limited. In many mines, the exploration paradigms and current knowledge as well as contemporary analytical methodology likely resulted in minerals hosting these metals to end up as waste, that is, on the mine dumps. In other cases, they were identified, but considered as mineralogical "exotica". Even extremely well-known and traditionally valuable metals such as gold went undetected on the dumps in some mine fields. This is due to a combination of factors such as that the deposits were "of the wrong type", assays were expensive, and suitable laboratory capacity sparse. This implies that in many regions, this old mine waste is a potential resource for several sought-after metals and semi-metals, including the ones increasingly used in modern high-tech applications. Admittedly, many older dumps and dump fields host only minor to moderate total amounts of material, but in todaýs society - increasingly focused on sustainability and related needs for recycling - this is likely to become an asset. In Sweden, many mine dumps date back hundreds of years or more as mining has been documented to go back at least 1000 years. Before the 20th century, only a single or, at best, a couple of metals were extracted from any given mine. Due to modern development in analytical techniques, the concentrations of trace elements, including highly sought-after metals and semi-metals can be obtained at moderate costs today. The presence of variable amounts of precious and rare elements along with the main ore commodity has now been documented in several cases. A recently started project in the classic, Palaeoproterozoic Bergslagen ore province in central Sweden is aimed at resolving the potential for finding and utilising these "unknown treasures". A conservative estimate based on SGU databases is that in this province alone, there are over 6500 mineralisations/deposits. A majority of these have associated mine dumps and in the case of more recently mined deposits, different types of tailings. Initial results highlight the high average contents of REÉs and identify their mineralogical and textural distribution in apatite-iron oxide ore present in both dumps and tailings. In addition, we report the occurrence of previously undetected mineralisation of indium and tungsten in different mine dumps in the western part of the province.

Developing CORBA-Based Distributed Scientific Applications From Legacy Fortran Programs

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sang, Janche; Kim, Chan; Lopez, Isaac

2000-01-01

An efficient methodology is presented for integrating legacy applications written in Fortran into a distributed object framework. Issues and strategies regarding the conversion and decomposition of Fortran codes into Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) objects are discussed. Fortran codes are modified as little as possible as they are decomposed into modules and wrapped as objects. A new conversion tool takes the Fortran application as input and generates the C/C++ header file and Interface Definition Language (IDL) file. In addition, the performance of the client server computing is evaluated.

Characterization of particulate emissions from Australian open-cut coal mines: Toward improved emission estimates.

PubMed

Richardson, Claire; Rutherford, Shannon; Agranovski, Igor

2018-06-01

Given the significance of mining as a source of particulates, accurate characterization of emissions is important for the development of appropriate emission estimation techniques for use in modeling predictions and to inform regulatory decisions. The currently available emission estimation methods for Australian open-cut coal mines relate primarily to total suspended particulates and PM 10 (particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter <10 μm), and limited data are available relating to the PM 2.5 (<2.5 μm) size fraction. To provide an initial analysis of the appropriateness of the currently available emission estimation techniques, this paper presents results of sampling completed at three open-cut coal mines in Australia. The monitoring data demonstrate that the particulate size fraction varies for different mining activities, and that the region in which the mine is located influences the characteristics of the particulates emitted to the atmosphere. The proportion of fine particulates in the sample increased with distance from the source, with the coarse fraction being a more significant proportion of total suspended particulates close to the source of emissions. In terms of particulate composition, the results demonstrate that the particulate emissions are predominantly sourced from naturally occurring geological material, and coal comprises less than 13% of the overall emissions. The size fractionation exhibited by the sampling data sets is similar to that adopted in current Australian emission estimation methods but differs from the size fractionation presented in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency methodology. Development of region-specific emission estimation techniques for PM 10 and PM 2.5 from open-cut coal mines is necessary to allow accurate prediction of particulate emissions to inform regulatory decisions and for use in modeling predictions. Development of region-specific emission estimation techniques for PM 10 and PM 2.5 from open-cut coal mines is necessary to allow accurate prediction of particulate emissions to inform regulatory decisions and for use in modeling predictions. Comprehensive air quality monitoring was undertaken, and corresponding recommendations were provided.

Optimized DNA extraction from neonatal dried blood spots: application in methylome profiling

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Background Neonatal dried blood spots (DBS) represent an inexpensive method for long-term biobanking worldwide and are considered gold mines for research for several human diseases, including those of metabolic, infectious, genetic and epigenetic origin. However, the utility of DBS is restricted by the limited amount and quality of extractable biomolecules (including DNA), especially for genome wide profiling. Degradation of DNA in DBS often occurs during storage and extraction. Moreover, amplifying small quantities of DNA often leads to a bias in subsequent data, particularly in methylome profiles. Thus it is important to develop methodologies that maximize both the yield and quality of DNA from DBS for downstream analyses. Results Using combinations of in-house-derived and modified commercial extraction kits, we developed a robust and efficient protocol, compatible with methylome studies, many of which require stringent bisulfite conversion steps. Several parameters were tested in a step-wise manner, including blood extraction, cell lysis, protein digestion, and DNA precipitation, purification and elution. DNA quality was assessed based on spectrophotometric measurements, DNA detectability by PCR, and DNA integrity by gel electrophoresis and bioanalyzer analyses. Genome scale Infinium HumanMethylation450 and locus-specific pyrosequencing data generated using the refined DBS extraction protocol were of high quality, reproducible and consistent. Conclusions This study may prove useful to meet the increased demand for research on prenatal, particularly epigenetic, origins of human diseases and for newborn screening programs, all of which are often based on DNA extracted from DBS. PMID:24980254

Urinary metabolic profiling of asymptomatic acute intermittent porphyria using a rule-mining-based algorithm.

PubMed

Luck, Margaux; Schmitt, Caroline; Talbi, Neila; Gouya, Laurent; Caradeuc, Cédric; Puy, Hervé; Bertho, Gildas; Pallet, Nicolas

2018-01-01

Metabolomic profiling combines Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy with supervised statistical analysis that might allow to better understanding the mechanisms of a disease. In this study, the urinary metabolic profiling of individuals with porphyrias was performed to predict different types of disease, and to propose new pathophysiological hypotheses. Urine 1 H-NMR spectra of 73 patients with asymptomatic acute intermittent porphyria (aAIP) and familial or sporadic porphyria cutanea tarda (f/sPCT) were compared using a supervised rule-mining algorithm. NMR spectrum buckets bins, corresponding to rules, were extracted and a logistic regression was trained. Our rule-mining algorithm generated results were consistent with those obtained using partial least square discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) and the predictive performance of the model was significant. Buckets that were identified by the algorithm corresponded to metabolites involved in glycolysis and energy-conversion pathways, notably acetate, citrate, and pyruvate, which were found in higher concentrations in the urines of aAIP compared with PCT patients. Metabolic profiling did not discriminate sPCT from fPCT patients. These results suggest that metabolic reprogramming occurs in aAIP individuals, even in the absence of overt symptoms, and supports the relationship that occur between heme synthesis and mitochondrial energetic metabolism.

Cart'Eaux: an automatic mapping procedure for wastewater networks using machine learning and data mining

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bailly, J. S.; Delenne, C.; Chahinian, N.; Bringay, S.; Commandré, B.; Chaumont, M.; Derras, M.; Deruelle, L.; Roche, M.; Rodriguez, F.; Subsol, G.; Teisseire, M.

2017-12-01

In France, local government institutions must establish a detailed description of wastewater networks. The information should be available, but it remains fragmented (different formats held by different stakeholders) and incomplete. In the "Cart'Eaux" project, a multidisciplinary team, including an industrial partner, develops a global methodology using Machine Learning and Data Mining approaches applied to various types of large data to recover information in the aim of mapping urban sewage systems for hydraulic modelling. Deep-learning is first applied using a Convolution Neural Network to localize manhole covers on 5 cm resolution aerial RGB images. The detected manhole covers are then automatically connected using a tree-shaped graph constrained by industry rules. Based on a Delaunay triangulation, connections are chosen to minimize a cost function depending on pipe length, slope and possible intersection with roads or buildings. A stochastic version of this algorithm is currently being developed to account for positional uncertainty and detection errors, and generate sets of probable networks. As more information is required for hydraulic modeling (slopes, diameters, materials, etc.), text data mining is used to extract network characteristics from data posted on the Web or available through governmental or specific databases. Using an appropriate list of keywords, the web is scoured for documents which are saved in text format. The thematic entities are identified and linked to the surrounding spatial and temporal entities. The methodology is developed and tested on two towns in southern France. The primary results are encouraging: 54% of manhole covers are detected with few false detections, enabling the reconstruction of probable networks. The data mining results are still being investigated. It is clear at this stage that getting numerical values on specific pipes will be challenging. Thus, when no information is found, decision rules will be used to assign admissible numerical values to enable the final hydraulic modelling. Consequently, sensitivity analysis of the hydraulic model will be performed to take into account the uncertainty associated with each piece of information. Project funded by the European Regional Development Fund and the Occitanie Region.

New Trends in E-Science: Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brescia, Massimo

2012-11-01

Data mining, or Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD), while being the main methodology to extract the scientific information contained in Massive Data Sets (MDS), needs to tackle crucial problems since it has to orchestrate complex challenges posed by transparent access to different computing environments, scalability of algorithms, reusability of resources. To achieve a leap forward for the progress of e-science in the data avalanche era, the community needs to implement an infrastructure capable of performing data access, processing and mining in a distributed but integrated context. The increasing complexity of modern technologies carried out a huge production of data, whose related warehouse management and the need to optimize analysis and mining procedures lead to a change in concept on modern science. Classical data exploration, based on local user own data storage and limited computing infrastructures, is no more efficient in the case of MDS, worldwide spread over inhomogeneous data centres and requiring teraflop processing power. In this context modern experimental and observational science requires a good understanding of computer science, network infrastructures, Data Mining, etc. i.e. of all those techniques which fall into the domain of the so called e-science (recently assessed also by the Fourth Paradigm of Science). Such understanding is almost completely absent in the older generations of scientists and this reflects in the inadequacy of most academic and research programs. A paradigm shift is needed: statistical pattern recognition, object oriented programming, distributed computing, parallel programming need to become an essential part of scientific background. A possible practical solution is to provide the research community with easy-to understand, easy-to-use tools, based on the Web 2.0 technologies and Machine Learning methodology. Tools where almost all the complexity is hidden to the final user, but which are still flexible and able to produce efficient and reliable scientific results. All these considerations will be described in the detail in the chapter. Moreover, examples of modern applications offering to a wide variety of e-science communities a large spectrum of computational facilities to exploit the wealth of available massive data sets and powerful machine learning and statistical algorithms will be also introduced.

Mechanisms of Retinal Damage from Chronic Laser Radiation.

DTIC Science & Technology

1981-07-01

culture. The pigment epithelium is deter- mined to be almost equally susceptible to damage in vitro as in vivo and the same action spectrum is similar in...92 -97 D. Experiment III. Light Damage in Culture of Bovine Retinal Pigment Epithelium 1. Methodology a. Collection of Cells... epithelium : Mild form of damage. Figure 18 Inner segments severely damaged. Figure 19 : Cone pedicle after exposure. Figure 20 Outer plexiform layer

The Role of Work Experiences in College Student Leadership Development: Evidence from a National Dataset and a Text Mining Approach to Examining Beliefs about Leadership

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lewis, Jonathan S.

2017-01-01

Paid employment is one of the most common extracurricular activities among full-time undergraduates, and an array of studies has attempted to measure its impact. Methodological concerns with the extant literature, however, make it difficult to draw reliable conclusions. Furthermore, the research on working college students has little to say about…

Multiphysics Computational Analysis of a Solid-Core Nuclear Thermal Engine Thrust Chamber

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Wang, Ten-See; Canabal, Francisco; Cheng, Gary; Chen, Yen-Sen

2007-01-01

The objective of this effort is to develop an efficient and accurate computational heat transfer methodology to predict thermal, fluid, and hydrogen environments for a hypothetical solid-core, nuclear thermal engine - the Small Engine. In addition, the effects of power profile and hydrogen conversion on heat transfer efficiency and thrust performance were also investigated. The computational methodology is based on an unstructured-grid, pressure-based, all speeds, chemically reacting, computational fluid dynamics platform, while formulations of conjugate heat transfer were implemented to describe the heat transfer from solid to hydrogen inside the solid-core reactor. The computational domain covers the entire thrust chamber so that the afore-mentioned heat transfer effects impact the thrust performance directly. The result shows that the computed core-exit gas temperature, specific impulse, and core pressure drop agree well with those of design data for the Small Engine. Finite-rate chemistry is very important in predicting the proper energy balance as naturally occurring hydrogen decomposition is endothermic. Locally strong hydrogen conversion associated with centralized power profile gives poor heat transfer efficiency and lower thrust performance. On the other hand, uniform hydrogen conversion associated with a more uniform radial power profile achieves higher heat transfer efficiency, and higher thrust performance.

Investigation of the Process Conditions for Hydrogen Production by Steam Reforming of Glycerol over Ni/Al₂O₃ Catalyst Using Response Surface Methodology (RSM).

PubMed

Ebshish, Ali; Yaakob, Zahira; Taufiq-Yap, Yun Hin; Bshish, Ahmed

2014-03-19

In this work; a response surface methodology (RSM) was implemented to investigate the process variables in a hydrogen production system. The effects of five independent variables; namely the temperature (X₁); the flow rate (X₂); the catalyst weight (X₃); the catalyst loading (X₄) and the glycerol-water molar ratio (X₅) on the H₂ yield (Y₁) and the conversion of glycerol to gaseous products (Y₂) were explored. Using multiple regression analysis; the experimental results of the H₂ yield and the glycerol conversion to gases were fit to quadratic polynomial models. The proposed mathematical models have correlated the dependent factors well within the limits that were being examined. The best values of the process variables were a temperature of approximately 600 °C; a feed flow rate of 0.05 mL/min; a catalyst weight of 0.2 g; a catalyst loading of 20% and a glycerol-water molar ratio of approximately 12; where the H₂ yield was predicted to be 57.6% and the conversion of glycerol was predicted to be 75%. To validate the proposed models; statistical analysis using a two-sample t -test was performed; and the results showed that the models could predict the responses satisfactorily within the limits of the variables that were studied.

Automated mapping of mineral groups and green vegetation from Landsat Thematic Mapper imagery with an example from the San Juan Mountains, Colorado

USGS Publications Warehouse

Rockwell, Barnaby W.

2013-01-01

Multispectral satellite data acquired by the ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) and Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (TM) sensors are being used to populate an online Geographic Information System (GIS) of the spatial occurrence of mineral groups and green vegetation across the western conterminous United States and Alaska. These geospatial data are supporting U.S. Geological Survey national-scale mineral deposit database development and other mineral resource and geoenvironmental research as a means of characterizing mineral exposures related to mined and unmined hydrothermally altered rocks and mine waste. This report introduces a new methodology for the automated analysis of Landsat TM data that has been applied to more than 180 scenes covering the western United States. A map of mineral groups and green vegetation produced using this new methodology that covers the western San Juan Mountains, Colorado, and the Four Corners Region is presented. The map is provided as a layered GeoPDF and in GIS-ready digital format. TM data analysis results from other well-studied and mineralogically characterized areas with strong hydrothermal alteration and (or) supergene weathering of near-surface sulfide minerals are also shown and compared with results derived from ASTER data analysis.

A multivariate geostatistical methodology to delineate areas of potential interest for future sedimentary gold exploration.

PubMed

Goovaerts, P; Albuquerque, Teresa; Antunes, Margarida

2016-11-01

This paper describes a multivariate geostatistical methodology to delineate areas of potential interest for future sedimentary gold exploration, with an application to an abandoned sedimentary gold mining region in Portugal. The main challenge was the existence of only a dozen gold measurements confined to the grounds of the old gold mines, which precluded the application of traditional interpolation techniques, such as cokriging. The analysis could, however, capitalize on 376 stream sediment samples that were analyzed for twenty two elements. Gold (Au) was first predicted at all 376 locations using linear regression (R 2 =0.798) and four metals (Fe, As, Sn and W), which are known to be mostly associated with the local gold's paragenesis. One hundred realizations of the spatial distribution of gold content were generated using sequential indicator simulation and a soft indicator coding of regression estimates, to supplement the hard indicator coding of gold measurements. Each simulated map then underwent a local cluster analysis to identify significant aggregates of low or high values. The one hundred classified maps were processed to derive the most likely classification of each simulated node and the associated probability of occurrence. Examining the distribution of the hot-spots and cold-spots reveals a clear enrichment in Au along the Erges River downstream from the old sedimentary mineralization.

Facilitating adverse drug event detection in pharmacovigilance databases using molecular structure similarity: application to rhabdomyolysis

PubMed Central

Vilar, Santiago; Harpaz, Rave; Chase, Herbert S; Costanzi, Stefano; Rabadan, Raul

2011-01-01

Background Adverse drug events (ADE) cause considerable harm to patients, and consequently their detection is critical for patient safety. The US Food and Drug Administration maintains an adverse event reporting system (AERS) to facilitate the detection of ADE in drugs. Various data mining approaches have been developed that use AERS to detect signals identifying associations between drugs and ADE. The signals must then be monitored further by domain experts, which is a time-consuming task. Objective To develop a new methodology that combines existing data mining algorithms with chemical information by analysis of molecular fingerprints to enhance initial ADE signals generated from AERS, and to provide a decision support mechanism to facilitate the identification of novel adverse events. Results The method achieved a significant improvement in precision in identifying known ADE, and a more than twofold signal enhancement when applied to the ADE rhabdomyolysis. The simplicity of the method assists in highlighting the etiology of the ADE by identifying structurally similar drugs. A set of drugs with strong evidence from both AERS and molecular fingerprint-based modeling is constructed for further analysis. Conclusion The results demonstrate that the proposed methodology could be used as a pharmacovigilance decision support tool to facilitate ADE detection. PMID:21946238

Temporal and spatial bioassessment of ecological risk of Amazonian Itchyofauna associated to Hg exposure

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Castilhos, Z. C.; Almonsy, N.; Souto, P. S.; Pereira da Silva, L. C. C.; Bidone, E. D.

2003-05-01

In Amazon artisan gold mining, mercury (Hg) is released to environment during its use to amalgamate the fine particles of gold. Once mercury entries in aquatic ecosystems, it might be methylated to methylmercury (MeHg). The objectives of this work were: (i) to establish and compare the dose-response relationship for Hg accumulation by Tucunaré for a contaminated and a background area; (ii) to test the DRAC methodology to proceed field sampling of fish; (iii) to conduct a temporal analysis of magnitude of mercury contamination in fish during the last decade by using DRAC methodology and (v) to investigate the relationship between hematological parameters (erythrocytes, hematocrit, leukocytes and mean corpuscular volume) and Hg exposure in fish.. Close to 100 Tucunarés were caught in the Tapajós River region. The results showed significant differences in hematological parameters and Hg concentration considering contaminated and background areas and the temporal assessment suggest increase the Hg bio-availability during last decade in Tapajos River Region. One could suggest that those hematological parameters might be used as physiological biomarkers of Hg exposure in ecological risk assessment process and that Hg used by or remaining from gold mining “garimpos” might be continuous bio-available to Amazonian biota.

Development of a Standardized Methodology for the Use of COSI-Corr Sub-Pixel Image Correlation to Determine Surface Deformation Patterns in Large Magnitude Earthquakes.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Milliner, C. W. D.; Dolan, J. F.; Hollingsworth, J.; Leprince, S.; Ayoub, F.

2014-12-01

Coseismic surface deformation is typically measured in the field by geologists and with a range of geophysical methods such as InSAR, LiDAR and GPS. Current methods, however, either fail to capture the near-field coseismic surface deformation pattern where vital information is needed, or lack pre-event data. We develop a standardized and reproducible methodology to fully constrain the surface, near-field, coseismic deformation pattern in high resolution using aerial photography. We apply our methodology using the program COSI-corr to successfully cross-correlate pairs of aerial, optical imagery before and after the 1992, Mw 7.3 Landers and 1999, Mw 7.1 Hector Mine earthquakes. This technique allows measurement of the coseismic slip distribution and magnitude and width of off-fault deformation with sub-pixel precision. This technique can be applied in a cost effective manner for recent and historic earthquakes using archive aerial imagery. We also use synthetic tests to constrain and correct for the bias imposed on the result due to use of a sliding window during correlation. Correcting for artificial smearing of the tectonic signal allows us to robustly measure the fault zone width along a surface rupture. Furthermore, the synthetic tests have constrained for the first time the measurement precision and accuracy of estimated fault displacements and fault-zone width. Our methodology provides the unique ability to robustly understand the kinematics of surface faulting while at the same time accounting for both off-fault deformation and measurement biases that typically complicates such data. For both earthquakes we find that our displacement measurements derived from cross-correlation are systematically larger than the field displacement measurements, indicating the presence of off-fault deformation. We show that the Landers and Hector Mine earthquake accommodated 46% and 38% of displacement away from the main primary rupture as off-fault deformation, over a mean deformation width of 183 m and 133 m, respectively. We envisage that correlation results derived from our methodology will provide vital data for near-field deformation patterns and will be of significant use for constraining inversion solutions for fault slip at depth.

Budgeting of major nutrients and the mitigation options for nutrient mining in semi-arid tropical agro-ecosystem of Tamil Nadu, India using NUTMON model.

PubMed

Surendran, U; Rama Subramoniam, S; Raja, P; Kumar, V; Murugappan, V

2016-04-01

Mining of nutrients from soil is a major problem in developing countries causing soil degradation and threaten long-term food production. The present study attempts to apply NUTrient MONitoring (NUTMON) model for carrying out nutrient budgeting to assess the stocks and flows of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) in defined geographical unit based on the inputs, viz., mineral fertilizers, manures, atmospheric deposition, and sedimentation, and outputs, viz., harvested crop produces, residues, leaching, denitrification, and erosion losses. The study area covers Coimbatore and Erode Districts, which are potential agricultural areas in western agro-ecological zone of Tamil Nadu, India. The calculated nutrient balances for both the districts at district scale, using NUTMON methodology, were negative for nitrogen (N -3.3 and -10.1 kg ha(-1)) and potassium (K -58.6 and -9.8 kg ha(-1)) and positive for phosphorus (P +14.5 and 20.5 kg ha(-1)). Soil nutrient pool has to adjust the negative balance of N and K; there will be an expected mining of nutrient from the soil reserve. A strategy was attempted for deriving the fertilizer recommendation using Decision Support System for Integrated Fertilizer Recommendation (DSSIFER) to offset the mining in selected farms. The results showed that when DSSIFER recommended fertilizers are applied to crops, the nutrient balance was positive. NUTMON-Toolbox with DSSIFER would serve the purpose on enhancing soil fertility, productivity, and sustainability. The management options to mitigate nutrient mining with an integrated system approach are also discussed.

Finding novel relationships with integrated gene-gene association network analysis of Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 using species-independent text-mining.

PubMed

Kreula, Sanna M; Kaewphan, Suwisa; Ginter, Filip; Jones, Patrik R

2018-01-01

The increasing move towards open access full-text scientific literature enhances our ability to utilize advanced text-mining methods to construct information-rich networks that no human will be able to grasp simply from 'reading the literature'. The utility of text-mining for well-studied species is obvious though the utility for less studied species, or those with no prior track-record at all, is not clear. Here we present a concept for how advanced text-mining can be used to create information-rich networks even for less well studied species and apply it to generate an open-access gene-gene association network resource for Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803, a representative model organism for cyanobacteria and first case-study for the methodology. By merging the text-mining network with networks generated from species-specific experimental data, network integration was used to enhance the accuracy of predicting novel interactions that are biologically relevant. A rule-based algorithm (filter) was constructed in order to automate the search for novel candidate genes with a high degree of likely association to known target genes by (1) ignoring established relationships from the existing literature, as they are already 'known', and (2) demanding multiple independent evidences for every novel and potentially relevant relationship. Using selected case studies, we demonstrate the utility of the network resource and filter to ( i ) discover novel candidate associations between different genes or proteins in the network, and ( ii ) rapidly evaluate the potential role of any one particular gene or protein. The full network is provided as an open-source resource.

Drug safety data mining with a tree-based scan statistic.

PubMed

Kulldorff, Martin; Dashevsky, Inna; Avery, Taliser R; Chan, Arnold K; Davis, Robert L; Graham, David; Platt, Richard; Andrade, Susan E; Boudreau, Denise; Gunter, Margaret J; Herrinton, Lisa J; Pawloski, Pamala A; Raebel, Marsha A; Roblin, Douglas; Brown, Jeffrey S

2013-05-01

In post-marketing drug safety surveillance, data mining can potentially detect rare but serious adverse events. Assessing an entire collection of drug-event pairs is traditionally performed on a predefined level of granularity. It is unknown a priori whether a drug causes a very specific or a set of related adverse events, such as mitral valve disorders, all valve disorders, or different types of heart disease. This methodological paper evaluates the tree-based scan statistic data mining method to enhance drug safety surveillance. We use a three-million-member electronic health records database from the HMO Research Network. Using the tree-based scan statistic, we assess the safety of selected antifungal and diabetes drugs, simultaneously evaluating overlapping diagnosis groups at different granularity levels, adjusting for multiple testing. Expected and observed adverse event counts were adjusted for age, sex, and health plan, producing a log likelihood ratio test statistic. Out of 732 evaluated disease groupings, 24 were statistically significant, divided among 10 non-overlapping disease categories. Five of the 10 signals are known adverse effects, four are likely due to confounding by indication, while one may warrant further investigation. The tree-based scan statistic can be successfully applied as a data mining tool in drug safety surveillance using observational data. The total number of statistical signals was modest and does not imply a causal relationship. Rather, data mining results should be used to generate candidate drug-event pairs for rigorous epidemiological studies to evaluate the individual and comparative safety profiles of drugs. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Ethnography and Language in Educational Settings.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Green, Judith L., Ed.; Wallat, Cynthia, Ed.

This compilation includes the following essays: (1) "Conversational Inference and Classroom Learning" (John J. Gumperz); (2) "Persuasive Talk--The Social Organization of Children's Talk" (Jenny Cook-Gumperz); (3) "Ethnography--The Holistic Approach to Understanding Schooling" (Frank W. Lutz); (4) "Triangulated Inquiry--A Methodology for the…

Bilingual Lexical Interillumination in the Foreign Language Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

St. John, Oliver

2010-01-01

Foreign language (FL) education has been marked by a monolingual principle that has favoured "intralingual" methodologies. Bakhtin's view of language interillumination--that languages throw light on each other--challenges such language teaching practices radically. Using conversation analysis methods, this article examines transcripts of…

Utilizing Microsoft[R] Office to Produce and Present Recursive Frame Analysis Findings

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chenail, Ronald J.; Duffy, Maureen

2011-01-01

Although researchers conducting qualitative descriptive studies, ethnographies, phenomenologies, grounded theory, and narrative inquiries commonly use computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) to manage their projects and analyses, investigators conducting discursive methodologies such as discourse or conversation analysis seem…

Preliminary assessment of industrial needs for an advanced ocean technology

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Mourad, A. G.; Maher, K. M.; Balon, J. E.; Coyle, A. G.; Henkener, J. A.

1979-01-01

A quick-look review of selected ocean industries is presented for the purpose of providing NASA OSTA with an assessment of technology needs and market potential. The size and growth potential, needs and problem areas, technology presently used and its suppliers, are given for industries involved in deep ocean mining, petrochemicals ocean energy conversion. Supporting services such as ocean bottom surveying; underwater transportation, data collection, and work systems; and inspection and diving services are included. Examples of key problem areas that are amenable to advanced technology solutions are included. Major companies are listed.

Hybrid analysis for indicating patients with breast cancer using temperature time series.

PubMed

Silva, Lincoln F; Santos, Alair Augusto S M D; Bravo, Renato S; Silva, Aristófanes C; Muchaluat-Saade, Débora C; Conci, Aura

2016-07-01

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women worldwide. Diagnosis and treatment in early stages increase cure chances. The temperature of cancerous tissue is generally higher than that of healthy surrounding tissues, making thermography an option to be considered in screening strategies of this cancer type. This paper proposes a hybrid methodology for analyzing dynamic infrared thermography in order to indicate patients with risk of breast cancer, using unsupervised and supervised machine learning techniques, which characterizes the methodology as hybrid. The dynamic infrared thermography monitors or quantitatively measures temperature changes on the examined surface, after a thermal stress. In the dynamic infrared thermography execution, a sequence of breast thermograms is generated. In the proposed methodology, this sequence is processed and analyzed by several techniques. First, the region of the breasts is segmented and the thermograms of the sequence are registered. Then, temperature time series are built and the k-means algorithm is applied on these series using various values of k. Clustering formed by k-means algorithm, for each k value, is evaluated using clustering validation indices, generating values treated as features in the classification model construction step. A data mining tool was used to solve the combined algorithm selection and hyperparameter optimization (CASH) problem in classification tasks. Besides the classification algorithm recommended by the data mining tool, classifiers based on Bayesian networks, neural networks, decision rules and decision tree were executed on the data set used for evaluation. Test results support that the proposed analysis methodology is able to indicate patients with breast cancer. Among 39 tested classification algorithms, K-Star and Bayes Net presented 100% classification accuracy. Furthermore, among the Bayes Net, multi-layer perceptron, decision table and random forest classification algorithms, an average accuracy of 95.38% was obtained. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Plants from the abandoned Nacozari mine tailings: evaluation of their phytostabilization potential.

PubMed

Santos, Alina E; Cruz-Ortega, Rocio; Meza-Figueroa, Diana; Romero, Francisco M; Sanchez-Escalante, Jose Jesus; Maier, Raina M; Neilson, Julia W; Alcaraz, Luis David; Molina Freaner, Francisco E

2017-01-01

Phytostabilization is a remediation technology that uses plants for in-situ stabilization of contamination in soils and mine tailings. The objective of this study was to identify native plant species with potential for phytostabilization of the abandoned mine tailings in Nacozari, Sonora in northern Mexico. A flora of 42 species in 16 families of angiosperms was recorded on the tailings site and the abundance of the most common perennial species was estimated. Four of the five abundant perennial species showed evidence of regeneration: the ability to reproduce and establish new seedlings. A comparison of selected physicochemical properties of the tailings in vegetated patches with adjacent barren areas suggests that pH, electrical conductivity, texture, and concentration of potentially toxic elements do not limit plant distribution. For the most abundant species, the accumulation factor for most metals was <1, with the exception of Zn in two species. A short-term experiment on adaptation revealed limited evidence for the formation of local ecotypes in Prosopis velutina and Amaranthus watsonii . Overall, the results of this study indicate that five native plant species might have potential for phytostabilization of the Nacozari tailings and that seed could be collected locally to revegetate the site. More broadly, this study provides a methodology that can be used to identify native plants and evaluate their phytostabilization potential for similar mine tailings.

Evaluation of Wheel Loaders in Open Pit Marble Quarrying by Using the AHP and Topsis Approaches / Ocena pracy ładowarki na podwoziu kołowym w odkrywkowej kopalni marmuru w oparciu o metody AHP i topsis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kun, Mete; Topaloǧlu, Şeyda; Malli, Tahir

2013-03-01

The marble mining in Turkey has been rising since the early 80's. In relation to that, the marble income has become noticeably bigger than those of other mining sectors. In recent years, marble and natural stone export composes half of the total mine export with a value of two billion dollars. This rapid development observed in marble operation has increased the importance of mining economics, income-expenditure balance and cost analysis. The most important cost elements observed in marble quarrying are machinery and equipment, labor costs and geological structures of the field. The aim of this study is to is to propose a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach to evaluate the wheel loader alternatives and select the best loader under multiple criteria. A two-step methodology based on two MCDM methods, which are namely the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), are used in the evaluation procedure. More precisely, AHP is applied to determine the relative weights of evaluation criteria and TOPSIS is applied to rank the wheel loader alternatives. The proposed approach also provides a relatively simple and very well suited decision making tool for this type of decision making problems.

Uranium in mining water of kaolin open pit in Zarów (Lower Silesia); methodology of determination and genetic remarks.

PubMed

Chau, N D; Wyszomirski, P; Chruściel, E; Ochoński, A

1999-11-01

In this paper, a method of determination of uranium 238 and 234 in mining waters of Andrzej kaolin open pit in Zarów (Lower Silesia) is presented. The method is based on independent measurements of alpha and beta radiation intensities by means of a liquid scintillation spectrometer alpha/beta. The initial volume of water sample was 3 dm3, then it was diminished by chemical preparation to 6 cm3, and then 12 cm3 of scintillator was added. The lower limit of detection (for the measurement time of 8 h) for both 234U and 238U amounted to 0.02 Bq/dm3. For determination of the uranium content in ferruginous sediments precipitating from mining waters of the above-mentioned open pit, gamma ray spectrometry was used. The obtained results may be viewed as a contribution to studies on anomalous uranium concentration within this kaolin deposit. The elevated uranium content, in comparison with its average concentration in the Earth crust, is characteristic for parent rocks of Andrzej kaolin deposit, which are granitoids of Strzegom-Sobótka massif. In connection with it, the high uranium content can be observed not only in kaolin and weakly kaolinised granitoids from the deposit in question, but also in mining waters genetically related with them.

Plants from the abandoned Nacozari mine tailings: evaluation of their phytostabilization potential

PubMed Central

Santos, Alina E.; Cruz-Ortega, Rocio; Meza-Figueroa, Diana; Romero, Francisco M.; Sanchez-Escalante, Jose Jesus; Maier, Raina M.; Neilson, Julia W.; Alcaraz, Luis David

2017-01-01

Phytostabilization is a remediation technology that uses plants for in-situ stabilization of contamination in soils and mine tailings. The objective of this study was to identify native plant species with potential for phytostabilization of the abandoned mine tailings in Nacozari, Sonora in northern Mexico. A flora of 42 species in 16 families of angiosperms was recorded on the tailings site and the abundance of the most common perennial species was estimated. Four of the five abundant perennial species showed evidence of regeneration: the ability to reproduce and establish new seedlings. A comparison of selected physicochemical properties of the tailings in vegetated patches with adjacent barren areas suggests that pH, electrical conductivity, texture, and concentration of potentially toxic elements do not limit plant distribution. For the most abundant species, the accumulation factor for most metals was <1, with the exception of Zn in two species. A short-term experiment on adaptation revealed limited evidence for the formation of local ecotypes in Prosopis velutina and Amaranthus watsonii. Overall, the results of this study indicate that five native plant species might have potential for phytostabilization of the Nacozari tailings and that seed could be collected locally to revegetate the site. More broadly, this study provides a methodology that can be used to identify native plants and evaluate their phytostabilization potential for similar mine tailings. PMID:28484675

Modeling Crustal Deformation Due to the Landers, Hector Mine Earthquakes Using the SCEC Community Fault Model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gable, C. W.; Fialko, Y.; Hager, B. H.; Plesch, A.; Williams, C. A.

2006-12-01

More realistic models of crustal deformation are possible due to advances in measurements and modeling capabilities. This study integrates various data to constrain a finite element model of stress and strain in the vicinity of the 1992 Landers earthquake and the 1999 Hector Mine earthquake. The geometry of the model is designed to incorporate the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC), Community Fault Model (CFM) to define fault geometry. The Hector Mine fault is represented by a single surface that follows the trace of the Hector Mine fault, is vertical and has variable depth. The fault associated with the Landers earthquake is a set of seven surfaces that capture the geometry of the splays and echelon offsets of the fault. A three dimensional finite element mesh of tetrahedral elements is built that closely maintains the geometry of these fault surfaces. The spatially variable coseismic slip on faults is prescribed based on an inversion of geodetic (Synthetic Aperture Radar and Global Positioning System) data. Time integration of stress and strain is modeled with the finite element code Pylith. As a first step the methodology of incorporating all these data is described. Results of the time history of the stress and strain transfer between 1992 and 1999 are analyzed as well as the time history of deformation from 1999 to the present.

Function Clustering Self-Organization Maps (FCSOMs) for mining differentially expressed genes in Drosophila and its correlation with the growth medium.

PubMed

Liu, L L; Liu, M J; Ma, M

2015-09-28

The central task of this study was to mine the gene-to-medium relationship. Adequate knowledge of this relationship could potentially improve the accuracy of differentially expressed gene mining. One of the approaches to differentially expressed gene mining uses conventional clustering algorithms to identify the gene-to-medium relationship. Compared to conventional clustering algorithms, self-organization maps (SOMs) identify the nonlinear aspects of the gene-to-medium relationships by mapping the input space into another higher dimensional feature space. However, SOMs are not suitable for huge datasets consisting of millions of samples. Therefore, a new computational model, the Function Clustering Self-Organization Maps (FCSOMs), was developed. FCSOMs take advantage of the theory of granular computing as well as advanced statistical learning methodologies, and are built specifically for each information granule (a function cluster of genes), which are intelligently partitioned by the clustering algorithm provided by the DAVID_6.7 software platform. However, only the gene functions, and not their expression values, are considered in the fuzzy clustering algorithm of DAVID. Compared to the clustering algorithm of DAVID, these experimental results show a marked improvement in the accuracy of classification with the application of FCSOMs. FCSOMs can handle huge datasets and their complex classification problems, as each FCSOM (modeled for each function cluster) can be easily parallelized.

Establishing a pre-mining geochemical baseline at a uranium mine near Grand Canyon National Park, USA

USGS Publications Warehouse

Naftz, David L.; Walton-Day, Katherine

2016-01-01

During 2012, approximately 404,000 ha of Federal Land in northern Arizona was withdrawn from consideration of mineral extraction for a 20-year period to protect the Grand Canyon watershed from potentially adverse effects of U mineral exploration and development. The development, operation, and reclamation of the Canyon Mine during the withdrawal period provide an excellent field site to understand and document off-site migration of radionuclides within the withdrawal area. As part of the Department of Interior's (DOI's) study plan for the exclusion area, the objective of our study is to utilize pre-defined decision units (DUs) in areas within and surrounding the Canyon Mine to demonstrate how newly established incremental sampling methodologies (ISM) combined with multivariate statistical methods can be used to document a repeatable and statistically defensible measure of pre-mining baseline conditions in surface soils and stream sediment samples prior to ore extraction. During the survey in June 2013, the highest pre-mining 95% upper confidence level (UCL) concentrations with respect to As, Mo, U, and V were found in the triplicate samples collected from surface soils in the mine site DU designated as M1. Gamma activities were slightly elevated in soils within the M1 DU (up to 28 μR/h); however, off-site gamma activities in soil and stream-sediment samples were lower (< 6 to 12 μR/h). Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) was applied to 33 chemical constituents contained in the multivariate data generated from the analysis of triplicate samples collected in the soil and stream sediment DUs within and surrounding Canyon Mine. Most of the triplicate samples from individual DUs were grouped in the same dendrogram cluster when using a similarity value (SV) of 0.70 (unitless). Different group membership of triplicate samples from two of the four haul road DUs was likely the result of heterogeneity induced by non-native soil material introduced from the gravel road base or from vehicular traffic. Application of HCA and ISM will provide critical metrics to meet DOI's long-term goals for assessing off-site migration of radionuclides resulting from mining and reclamation in the current (2015) exclusion area associated within the Grand Canyon watershed and the associated national park.

Antimicrobial Stewardship in a Community Hospital: Attacking the More Difficult Problems

PubMed Central

Philmon, Carla L.; Johnson, Gregory D.; Ward, William S.; Rivers, LaToya L.; Williamson, Sharon A.; Goodman, Edward L.

2014-01-01

Background: Antibiotic stewardship has been proposed as an important way to reduce or prevent antibiotic resistance. In 2001, a community hospital implemented an antimicrobial management program. It was successful in reducing antimicrobial utilization and expenditure. In 2011, with the implementation of a data-mining tool, the program was expanded and its focus transitioned from control of antimicrobial use to guiding judicious antimicrobial prescribing. Objective: To test the hypothesis that adding a data-mining tool to an existing antimicrobial stewardship program will further increase appropriate use of antimicrobials. Design: Interventional study with historical comparison. Methods: Rules and alerts were built into the data-mining tool to aid in identifying inappropriate antibiotic utilization. Decentralized pharmacists acted on alerts for intravenous (IV) to oral conversion, perioperative antibiotic duration, and restricted antimicrobials. An Infectious Diseases (ID) Pharmacist and ID Physician/Hospital Epidemiologist focused on all other identified alert types such as antibiotic de-escalation, bug-drug mismatch, and double coverage. Electronic chart notes and phone calls to physicians were utilized to make recommendations. Results: During 2012, 2,003 antimicrobial interventions were made with a 90% acceptance rate. Targeted broad-spectrum antimicrobial use decreased by 15% in 2012 compared to 2010, which represented cost savings of $1,621,730. There were no statistically significant changes in antimicrobial resistance, and no adverse patient outcomes were noted. Conclusions: The addition of a data-mining tool to an antimicrobial stewardship program can further decrease inappropriate use of antimicrobials, provide a greater reduction in overall antimicrobial use, and provide increased cost savings without negatively affecting patient outcomes. PMID:25477615

Conversion of Coal Mine Gas to LNG

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

None, None

This project evolved from a 1995, DOE-NETL competitive solicitation for practical CMM capture and utilization concepts. Appalachian Pacific was one of three companies selected to proceed with the construction and operation of a cost-shared demonstration plant. In the course of trying to proceed with this demonstration plant, AP examined several liquefaction technologies, discussed obtaining rights to coal mine methane with a number of coal companies, explored marketing potential with a wide variety of customers in many sections of the United States, studied in great detail the impact of a carbon credit exchange, and developed a suite of analytical tools withmore » which to evaluate possible project options. In the end, the newness of the product, reluctance on the part of the coal companies to venture away from time tested practices, difficulty with obtaining financing, the failure of a carbon credit market to develop and the emergence of shale derived gas production prevented a demonstration plant from being built.« less

LSST Astroinformatics And Astrostatistics: Data-oriented Astronomical Research

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Borne, Kirk D.; Stassun, K.; Brunner, R. J.; Djorgovski, S. G.; Graham, M.; Hakkila, J.; Mahabal, A.; Paegert, M.; Pesenson, M.; Ptak, A.; Scargle, J.; Informatics, LSST; Statistics Team

2011-01-01

The LSST Informatics and Statistics Science Collaboration (ISSC) focuses on research and scientific discovery challenges posed by the very large and complex data collection that LSST will generate. Application areas include astroinformatics, machine learning, data mining, astrostatistics, visualization, scientific data semantics, time series analysis, and advanced signal processing. Research problems to be addressed with these methodologies include transient event characterization and classification, rare class discovery, correlation mining, outlier/anomaly/surprise detection, improved estimators (e.g., for photometric redshift or early onset supernova classification), exploration of highly dimensional (multivariate) data catalogs, and more. We present sample science results from these data-oriented approaches to large-data astronomical research. We present results from LSST ISSC team members, including the EB (Eclipsing Binary) Factory, the environmental variations in the fundamental plane of elliptical galaxies, and outlier detection in multivariate catalogs.

Bit-Table Based Biclustering and Frequent Closed Itemset Mining in High-Dimensional Binary Data

PubMed Central

Király, András; Abonyi, János

2014-01-01

During the last decade various algorithms have been developed and proposed for discovering overlapping clusters in high-dimensional data. The two most prominent application fields in this research, proposed independently, are frequent itemset mining (developed for market basket data) and biclustering (applied to gene expression data analysis). The common limitation of both methodologies is the limited applicability for very large binary data sets. In this paper we propose a novel and efficient method to find both frequent closed itemsets and biclusters in high-dimensional binary data. The method is based on simple but very powerful matrix and vector multiplication approaches that ensure that all patterns can be discovered in a fast manner. The proposed algorithm has been implemented in the commonly used MATLAB environment and freely available for researchers. PMID:24616651

Common Criteria related security design patterns--validation on the intelligent sensor example designed for mine environment.

PubMed

Bialas, Andrzej

2010-01-01

The paper discusses the security issues of intelligent sensors that are able to measure and process data and communicate with other information technology (IT) devices or systems. Such sensors are often used in high risk applications. To improve their robustness, the sensor systems should be developed in a restricted way to provide them with assurance. One of assurance creation methodologies is Common Criteria (ISO/IEC 15408), used for IT products and systems. The contribution of the paper is a Common Criteria compliant and pattern-based method for the intelligent sensors security development. The paper concisely presents this method and its evaluation for the sensor detecting methane in a mine, focusing on the security problem of the intelligent sensor definition and solution. The aim of the validation is to evaluate and improve the introduced method.

Determination of optimal environmental policy for reclamation of land unearthed in lignite mines - Strategy and tactics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Batzias, Dimitris F.; Pollalis, Yannis A.

2012-12-01

In this paper, optimal environmental policy for reclamation of land unearthed in lignite mines is defined as a strategic target. The tactics concerning the achievement of this target, includes estimation of optimal time lag between each lignite site (which is a segment of the whole lignite field) complete exploitation and its reclamation. Subsidizing of reclamation has been determined as a function of this time lag and relevant implementation is presented for parameter values valid for the Greek economy. We proved that the methodology we have developed gives reasonable quantitative results within the norms imposed by legislation. Moreover, the interconnection between strategy and tactics becomes evident, since the former causes the latter by deduction and the latter revises the former by induction in the time course of land reclamation.