The objectives of the study performed at the Naval Nuclear Fuel Division of the Babcock and Wilcox Company were to (1) determine self-perceived continuing education needs of technical personnel, (2) determine how attitudes of technical personnel toward participation in continuing education programs were related to their present position, the attitude of their immediate supervisor, and division policy, and (3) recommend areas of concentration in providing programs needed to update technical personnel. Survey questionnaire data obtained from the study group was analyzed with respect to relevant material intended to profile the education background of the study group, consensus of responses between the study (Babcock and Wilcox) and control (Pennsylvania State) groups subject area continuing education needs of the study group, and formulated hypotheses. The findings of the study were: 1. Study group perceived needs were concentrated in required areas of technical competence in the work environment or were related to final application of the products manufactured by the Division. 2. Strong study group consensus concerning need for managerial training implied that the majority of personnel entertain aspirations for promotion into management positions. 3. Division policy and supervisor attitude toward continuing education were not found to be related to participation in formal continuing education programs. 4. Age was not found to be related to participation in either formal or informal learning programs. 5. Job function (administrative or applied technical) was not strongly related to either the type or extent of need for subjects relative to the work environment. / Master of Science

The choice of active-constraint logic for screening inequalities has a major impact on the performance of gradient-projection method. It has been found that least-constrained strategies, which keep the number of constraints in the active set as small as possible, are computationally most efficient. However, these strategies are often prone to cycling of constraints between active and inactive status. This occurs mainly due to the violation of some of the constraints, taken as inactive, by the resulting step. This research develops methods for choosing an active set such that constraints in the active set satisfy the Kuhn-Tucker conditions and the resulting step does not violate the linear approximations to any of the constraints satisfied as equalities but considered inactive. Some of the existing active-constraint logics, specifically the dual-violator rule, yield the desired active set when two constraints are satisfied as equalities. However, when three or more constraints are satisfied as equalities, none of the existing logics give the desired active set. A number of general results, which help in the selection of the active set, have been developed in this research. An active-constraint logic has been developed for the case of three constraints. This logic gives the desired active-set. For the general case, when more than three constraints are satisfied as equalities, a separate active-set logic is suggested. This guarantees the nonviolation of the linear approximations to any of the constraints, taken as inactive, by the resulting step. The resulting active-set may not, however, satisfy the Kuhn-Tucker conditions. The efficiency of the proposed logic was tested computationally using quadratic programming problems. Three existing active-set strategies were used for comparision. The proposed logic almost always performed as well or better than the best among the three existing active-set strategies. / Ph. D.

Class I antiarrhythmic drugs, such as lidocaine, quinidine and procainamide, are known to be effective membrane stabilizers. However, the mechanism of such "membrane stabilization" has not been elucidated. In the present study we found that all three drugs are powerful scavengers of hydroxyl! radical. In addition, lidocaine was found to be a quencher of singlet oxygen. These drugs are also found to inhibit NADPH-dependent lipid peroxidation in bovine lung microsomes in a dose dependent manner. Since oxyradicals are implicated in the lipid peroxidation process and antiarrhythmic drugs were found to scavenge/quench reactive oxygen species, we proposed that the membrane Stabilizing effects of antiarrhythmic drugs may, in part, be due to their antioxidant properties. Ischemia-reperfusion injury has been studied in many organs. Despite the evidence of functional, metabolic and structural abnormalities during reperfusion, the precise mechanism of reperfusion lung injury remains obscure. Data from the organ models suggest that toxic oxygen metabolites play an important role in the mechanism of reperfusion tissue injury. Lidocaine has also been shown to be clinically valuable for the treatment and prevention of ventricular arrhythmia occurring after surgical correction of myocardial infraction. We found that the class I antiarrhythmic drugs are effective in ameliorating post-ischemic lung reperfusion injury in an ex vivo perfused rat lung model exposed to both normoxic and hyperoxic conditions. Since phagocytes are known to generate reactive oxygen species and play an important role in causing irreversible oxidative tissue injury during reperfusion of organs, we examined the role of antiarrhythmic agents on macrophage function. We found that these drugs inhibit superoxide and hydrogen peroxide production in stimulated macrophages in a dose dependent manner. The diminished production of superoxide was found to be not due to the inactivation of superoxide generating NADPH-oxidase enzyme but by inhibition of the phagocytosis process by these drugs The results of these studies indicate that the antiarrhythmic drugs, such as, lidocaine, quinidine and procainamide, are effective antioxidants and can protect biomembranes against lipid peroxidation injury and post-ischemic reperfusion injury of the lung. We have investigated the mechanism(s) of action of these drugs in ameliorating oxidative tissue injury and found that these drugs are not only effective in removing reactive oxygen species but also cause inactivation of pulmonary macrophage from inappropriately generating reactive species of oxygen. The fundamental knowledge derived from these Studies could lead to enhanced functional improvement of patients following cardiopulmonary bypass, pulmonary arterial embolectomy and acute respiratory distress syndrome, all of which undergo a period of elective/induced ischemia and reperfusion or oxidative stress. / Ph. D.

The scheduling of material requirements at a factory to maximize profits.or productivity is a difficult mathematical problem. The stochastic nature of most production setups introduces additional complications as a result of the uncertainty involved in vendor reliability and processing times. But in developing the descriptive model for a system, a true representation can only be attained if the variability of these elements is considered. Here we present the development of a normative model based on a new type of descriptive model which considers the element of stochasticity. The arrival time of an assembly part from a vendor is considered to be a normally distributed random variable. We attempt to optimize the system with regard to work-in-process inventory using a dynamic programming algorithm in combination with a heuristic procedure. The decision variable is the prescribed assembly part delivery date. The model is particularly suitable for application in low volume assembly lines, where products are manufactured in discrete batches. / Master of Science