Currently, several state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) are using contractor test results, in conjunction with verification test results, for construction and materials acceptance purposes. While the reasons for using contractor test results for construction and materials acceptance purposes are real (essentially shortage of state DOT staff and intensive construction schedules), the practice itself has fundamental pitfalls. This research reveals the conceptual and technical pitfalls of using contractor test results for acceptance and payment purposes; identifies and ranks potential alternatives and improvements to the use of contractor test results for acceptance and payment purposes; and investigates the potential application of skip-lot sampling as a means for reducing acceptance sampling and testing for highway agencies.

6 pp. / 1. Drinking Water Wells; 2. Private Water Well Components; 3. Do Deeper Wells Mean Better Water; 4. Maintaining Your Private Well Water System; 5. Private Well Protection; 6. Well Water Testing and Understanding the Results; 7. Obtaining a Water Sample for Bacterial Analysis; 8. Microorganisms in Private Water Wells; 9. Lead in Private Water Wells; 10. Nitrate in Private Water Wells; 11.Arsenic in Private Water Wells; 12. Matching Drinking Water Quality Problems to Treatment Methods; 13. Commonly Available Home Water Treatment Systems; 14. Hard Water: To Soften or Not to Soften; 15. Shock Chlorination of Private Water Wells / This fact sheet is one in a series of fifteen for private water well owners. The one- to four-page fact sheets will be assembled into a two-pocket folder entitled Private Well Owners Guide. The titles will also be a part of the Changing Rural Landscapes project whose goal is to educate exurban, small acreage residents. The authors have made every effort to align the fact sheets with the proposed Arizona Cooperative Extension booklet An Arizona Well Owners Guide to Water Sources, Quality, Sources, Testing, Treatment, and Well Maintenance by Artiola and Uhlman. The private well owner project was funded by both the University of Arizonas Water Sustainability Program-Technology and Research Initiative Fund and the USDA-CSREES Region 9 Water Quality Program.

There have been debates on the big differences in mathematics knowledge concerning pupils in Sweden and Finland. Especially, one common issue in the discussions of education is the Pisa test results, which take up in the media. In the Pisa research the Finnish pupils get through well year after year. Because of the discussions about the distinct school systems in Sweden and Finland, I found it interesting to investigate the divergence of the curriculums in these two countries. The main research questions asked were, what are the main differences and similarities in the Swedish and Finnish curriculums in primary school? Such as, is the assignment of primary school similar in Sweden and Finland? In my study I analyzed and compared by means of the curriculum especially mathe-matics teaching in primary schools in grade three in Sweden and in grade two Fin-land. I have concentrated on the knowledge differences and similarities in these two curriculums. I have as well studied how tasks of the schools and the values affect in curriculums. I have looked for the answers to my main questions by conducting a text analysis of the Swedish and the Finnish curriculums. The results indicate that in the Swedish and the Finnish curriculums there are similari-ties in the general curriculum as well in the democracy as in the assignment of the school. Several differences have also been found out concerning mathematics such as discrepancy between the objectives. Also another divergence can also be found out; The curriculum of the Finnish primary school is more detailed and legible than the curriculum of the Swedish primary school. Furthermore, my results show that level of mathematics in the primary school in grade three in Sweden is almost the same as the level in grade two in Finland which leads to another disparity in the mathematics edu-cation in these two countries.

>Magister Scientiae - MSc / The identification of the association between socio-demographic characteristics and HIV was found to be a useful tool in determining the important risk factors in Sudan. In this study, the relationship(s) between HIV test results and the demographic characteristics such as gender, age, residence area, employment, education, marital status and religion in Omdurman, Sudan were investigated. The data were collected from patients visiting Omdurman National Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) Centre from April 2005 to April 2006. The study sample was represented by 320 patients. Tables were used in the data analysis to present the distribution of the participants by the result of HIV test and demographic factors; odds ratios were also obtained from these tables. The Chi-square test was used to test the association between each socio-demographic factor and the result of HIV test; the Pvalue obtained from this test was measured at a significance level of 0.05. Finally, the joint effect of all demographic factors on HIV test results was tested using logistic regression. A significant association between socio-demographic characteristics and HIV test results was observed. It showed a higher incidence rate in females, middle-aged, married, employed and Christian individuals. HIV was also found to be higher in urban areas than in rural areas. The lower incident rate was observed among educated individuals.

For direct cycle gas cooled high temperature reactor designs, operating conditions may be limited as a result of excessive maintenance dose rates caused by the 110mAg source term on the turbine. The accurate prediction of silver fission and activation products’ release during normal operation is required to ensure regulatory compliance and economic viability of planned power plants. Fuel qualification programs should provide satisfactory results to ensure correct analyses, but will however not be available for many years. In the meantime data from the German fuel development program may be utilized. Traditionally diffusion models were used to derive transport parameters from limited irradiation testing of fuel materials and components. Best estimates for all applicable German fuel irradiation tests with defendable uncertainty ranges were never derived. However, diffusion theory and current parameters cannot account for all irradiation and heat-up test results, and for some tests, it appears unacceptably conservative. Other transport mechanisms have been suggested and alternative calculation models are being considered. In this thesis the relevant German material and irradiation tests were evaluated with the current PBMR metallic fission product release calculation model. Transport through all the fuel materials and components and from the sphere to the coolant gas was considered and best possible models and parameters were suggested. For the transport of silver through the SiC layer an alternative suggested model called the Molecular Vapour Transport Release (MVR) Model was evaluated against the traditional diffusion model. From this evaluation it was shown that classical diffusion modelling was still a viable model to predict silver transport in SiC. The MVR model was found to be a feasible model as well. However, due to the much larger verification and validation effort required, it was decided to use the diffusion model until such time that experimental results become available that might elucidate the exact physical transport model. The evaluation also showed that the diffusion model used must be quantified in a detailed evaluation of all applicable irradiation tests. A study of all German irradiation tests was previously performed and the applicable irradiation tests were identified. A detailed evaluation of these irradiation tests were performed with an updated diffusion model. New transport and material parameters were derived in this detailed evaluation and compared with existing values. An evaluation of some heat-up tests of irradiated fuel spheres was performed to assess the range for which the newly derived transport parameters are valid. The different models with their old and newly derived parameters were used to analyse sample PBMR cores. Recommendations were made to the suitability of the different models and parameters for future PBMR silver fission and activation product analyses. / Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Physics / unrestricted

This thesis aims to uncover anomalies in the data describing the performance behavior of a "robot controller" as measured by software metrics. The purpose of analyzing data is mainly to identify the changes that have resulted in different performance behaviors which we refer to as performance anomalies. To address this issue, two separate pre-processing approaches have been developed: one that adds the principal component to the data after cleaning steps and another that does not regard the principal component. Next, Isolation Forest is employed, which uses an ensemble of isolation trees for data points to segregate anomalies and generate scores that can be used to discover anomalies. Further, in order to detect anomalies, the highest distances matching cluster centroids are employed in the clustering procedure. These two data preparation methods, along with two anomaly detection algorithms, identified software builds that are very likely to be anomalies. According to an industrial evaluation conducted based on engineers’ domain knowledge, around 70% of the detected software builds as anomalous builds were successfully identified, indicating system variable deviations or software bugs.

Replacement of the traditional thermodynamic hydrate inhibitors (methanol and glycols) in multiphase applications is highly desirable for Health, Safety & Environment (HSE) considerations and for investment costs savings. Low Dose Hydrate Inhibitors (LDHI) are good candidates to achieve this objective and their interest is growing in the E&P industry. There are two types of LDHI: the Kinetic Hydrate Inhibitors (KHI) and the Anti-Agglomerants (AA) also called dispersant additives. The main challenge with LDHIs is that they require the unprocessed effluents to be produced inside the hydrate stability zone. It is then of the utmost importance to select, qualify and implement properly LDHIs, so that their field deployment is performed with success. But due to the very stochastic nature of the nucleation step, the hydrate crystallisation process leads to very large discrepancies between performances results carried out at lab or pilot scales. In order to overcome this difficulty, we have developed an in-house special protocol which is implemented prior to each qualification tests series. This in-house 15 years old protocol consists in conducting each tests series with a fluids system having previously formed hydrates in a first step but followed by a dissociation step at moderate temperature for a few hours. This paper presents results selected from several field cases studies and obtained from our 80 bara and 165 bara flow loops. They show the very good reproducibility obtained with and without LDHIs. In the case of KHI, where the stochastic nature of the nucleation step is very critical, the results show that the deviation on the “hold time” for a given subcooling is less than 15%. (Revised version of ICGH paper 5499_1)

This diploma thesis deals with the area of software testing, more precisely with the topic of managing test results. The aim of this work is to find, set up and implement a system that complements the missing functionality of the TMT tool, which is going to replace the Nitrate tool in Red Hat as a test management system. The content of this work is a basic introduction to the tools Nitrate, TMT and other technologies used in Red Hat. Furthermore, the work presents the current state of the test infrastructure and collected user requirements for a new system for managing test results. Subsequently, the ReportPortal tool is introduced as a system for test results management and the missing functionality is defined. The rest of the work is devoted to setting up the system itself and implementing the missing functionality, along with implementing the infrastructure needed to import test results into ReportPortal. The work describes the method of deploying the system in use and feedback from users. The deployed system is evaluated and its further possible improvements are discussed.

Correlation tests were run on yearly snowfall and tornado activity data collected between water-years 1965/66 and 2010/11. Snowfall activity was evaluated using two separate measurements, which included snowfall days and daily snow depth. Tornado activity was measured through tornado days and total yearly tornado occurrences. Tornado days were defined as a 24-h period (0600–0600 UTC) during which either one or more tornadoes occurred within a chosen southern region boundary. Correlation tests revealed an absence of any mutual relationship between the snowfall and tornado activity. Three prominent teleconnections (ENSO, NAO, & AO), 6-month (Oct-Dec and Feb-Apr) and 3-month means (Oct-May) were also analyzed to reveal possible correlations with the tornado and snowfall activity. Significant negative correlations were found between ONI × tornado days; ONI × tornado totals; NAOI × snowfall days; NAOI × snow depth; AOI × snowfall days; and AOI × snow depth

Genetic test results have important implications for close family members. Indeterminate negative results are the most common outcome of BRCA1/2 mutation testing. Little is known about family members' understanding of indeterminate negative BRCA1/2 test results. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to investigate how daughters and sisters received and understood genetic test results as shared by their mothers or sisters. Participants included 81 women aged 40-74 with mothers or sisters previously diagnosed with breast cancer and who received indeterminate negative BRCA1/2 test results. Participants had never been diagnosed with breast cancer nor received their own genetic testing or counseling. This IRB approved study utilized semi-structured interviews administered via telephone. The research team developed descriptive codes, and NVIVO software was used during qualitative analysis. Participants reported low amounts of information shared with them. Most women described test results as negative and incorrectly interpreted the test to mean there was no genetic component to the pattern of cancer in their families. Only 7 of 81 women accurately described test results consistent with the meaning of an indeterminate negative result — meaning a genetic cause for cancer in their family could still exist. Our findings demonstrate that indeterminate negative genetic test results are not well understood by family members. Lack of understanding may lead to an inability to effectively communicate results to primary care providers and missed opportunities for prevention, screening and further genetic testing. We recommend providing family members letters they can share with their own primary care providers whenever genetic testing is performed.