Rapid first-stage tests of on-ship infection

Protection against on-ship infectious disease—whether due to mishap or to harmful purpose—faces special situational problems. Sometimes, when infection levels on board have reached threshold levels, emergency actions are required. Often, the most thorough strategies for responding to threat are not feasible. A rapid first-stage test (RFT) is a fast, minimally invasive procedure used to rule out from possible infection a large percentage of an infection-threatened group. Prevention and control of on-ship infection need to combine various interconnected tactics. When timely criterion tests are not possible, the medical team must adopt fast alternative measures. The methods used to summarize protection against on-ship infectious agents included a scientific literature review and a web search. The fields of the review were maritime, health, and technology sources. Special attention was paid to material dealing with risks and threats of on-ship penetration by infectious agents, on-ship infection prevalence thresholds, and rapid diagnostic screens. The Bayes rule and the law of large numbers were applied to the analysis, for large on-ship populations, of RFT indications of crossing of an infection prevalence threshold. The increasing risk of serious on-ship infection—either accidental or purposeful—calls for a multi-layered protection approach. RFTs are a key part of the outer layer of such a defense. Well-designed and well-administered RFTs provide several advantages for defense against on-ship infection: low-cost, non-invasive, fast, and focuses on a drastically smaller number of infection possibilities.     

Vocational and academic approaches to maritime education and training (MET): Trends,challenges and opportunities

Traditional seafarer training has always focused on the acquisition and use of practical skills. The prevailing view is that, while this approach addresses a degree of cognitive skills, it focuses on and gives much more emphasis to the acquisition of hands-on practical skills for the performance of specific tasks. On the other hand, academic education has been seen to be much more focused on the development of in-depth analytical and critical thinking skills; cognitive skills that are less reliant on hands-on task-oriented training, but stress critical reading and discussion. The global trend in maritime education and training is increasingly to link an essentially vocational education that provides specific and restricted competence outcomes with more general or deeper academic components leading to an academic qualification. This trend has led to some dilemmas for curriculum development, for training legislation in a global industry, and for achieving desired learning outcomes in a professional setting (in the shipping industry). This paper discusses some of the challenges arising from this trend and the opportunities the trend offers.     

Study on collision between two ships using selected parameters in collision simulation

In the present analysis, several parameters used in a numerical simulation are investigated in an integrated study to obtain their influence on the process and results of this simulation. The parameters studied are element formulation, friction coefficient, and material model. Numerical simulations using the non-linear finite element method are conducted to produce virtual experimental data for several collision scenarios. Pattern and size damages caused by collision in a real accident case are assumed as real experimental data, and these are used to validate the method. The element model study performed indicates that the Belytschko-Tsay element formulation should be recommended for use in virtual experiments. It is recommended that the real value of the friction coefficient for materials involved is applied in simulations. For the study of the material model, the application of materials with high yield strength is recommended for use in the side hull structure.     

The jurisdictional challenges to the prosecution of piracy cases in Kenya: mixed fortunes for a perfect model in the global war against piracy

Since 2008 Kenya has distinguished itself in the global war against piracy by undertaking prosecutions in the national courts of suspected pirates arrested in the high seas and handed over by navies of leading maritime nations under bilateral agreements (MOUs) entered into between Kenya and these leading maritime nations. As of July 2011, Kenya had over 20 convicted pirates serving jail terms ranging between 7 and 20 years and over 100 suspected pirates awaiting trial in national courts. This is the largest number of suspected pirates held and tried in any one state at any given time in modern history. To achieve this, Kenya had to effect far reaching changes in the law. In the initial stages, suspected pirates were charged under Kenya’s Penal Code (Cap 63 Laws of Kenya). However, the high court in the case of Re Mohamud Mohamed Dashi and eight others [2010] eKLR, ruled that Kenya had no jurisdiction to try suspected pirates under that law. In September 2009, Kenya passed a new law (the Merchant Shipping Act), which not only defined more comprehensively and extensively the offence of piracy, but also extended the jurisdiction of Kenyan courts to try piracy committed by non-nationals. Though the law gives Kenya a very broad jurisdiction to try suspected pirates, the process is still fraught with challenges due to lack of financial and human resources. In the case of Republic vs Hassan Jama Haleys Alias Hassan Jamal and five others [2010] eKLR, the court commented thus:

“… I must note that the ‘piracy trials’ have presented a unique challenge to the Kenyan legal system. We cannot ignore the fact that these are suspects who having been arrested by foreign naval forces on the High Seas are brought to Kenya for trial. They are strangers in the country, do not understand the legal system, may not know what their rights are and do not understand the language… the Kenyan Government and the International partners supporting these trials put in place a system to provide free legal representation for the suspects…”     

Using a SVM to evaluate damage to vibration isolators in an elastic raft system

Predicting damage to vibration isolators in a raft experiencing heavy shock loadings from explosions is an important task when designing a raft system. It is also vital to be able to research the vulnerability of heavily shocked floating rafts unreliable, especially when the allowable values The conventional approach to prediction has been or ultimate values of vibration isolators of supposedly uniform standard in a raft actually have differing and uncertain values due to defective workmanship. A new model for predicting damage to vibration isolators in a shocked floating raft system is presented in this paper. It is based on a support vector machine（SVM）, which uses Artificial Intelligence to characterize complicated nonlinear mapping between the impacting environment and damage to the vibration isolators. The effectiveness of the new method for predicting damage was illustrated by numerical simulations, and shown to be effective when relevant parameters of the model were chosen reasonably. The effect determining parameters, including kernel function and penalty factors, has on prediction results is also discussed. It can be concluded that the SVM will probably become a valid tool to study damage or vulnerability in a shocked raft system.     

Casualty analysis of large tankers

This article presents detailed results of a comprehensive analysis of recorded accidents of large oil tankers (deadweight greater than 80 000 tonnes) occurring between 1978 and 2003. The analysis encompasses a thorough review of available raw accident data and their postprocessing in a way to produce appropriate statistics useful for the implementation of risk-based assessment methodologies. The processing of the captured data led to the identification of significant qualitative historical trends of tanker accidents and of quantitative characteristics of large tanker accidents, such as overall accident rates per ship-year. Data were also analyzed for all major accident categories separately, taking into account tanker ship size/type, the degree of accident severity, and the oil spill tonne rates per ship-year; this led to the identification of heavily polluted worldwide geographical areas as a result of large tanker accidents.     

Statistical and dynamical analyses of propagation mechanisms of solitary internal waves in a two-layer stratification

The blocking effect of submarine ridges on the propagation of internal solitary waves (ISWs) over the topography of the seabed results in the fission of the solitary waves that accompany the generation of reflected and transmitted waves. In this study, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) is used to investigate the inseparable relationship between the transmission and reflection. An examination of the error sums of squares and cross-products (SSCP) matrix and the correction matrix shows that the correlation between the transmission (at/ai) and reflection coefficients (ar/ai) is quite low (0.284). Moreover, from multivariate testing, including Pillai’s trace, Wilks’ lambda, Hotelling’s trace and Roy’s largest root, we conclude that the ridge height has a large effect (η = 0.456) on both the amplitude of the transmitted and reflected waves, as well as large (η = 0.411) and very large (η = 0.469) effects on the amplitudes of the transmitted and reflected waves, respectively. In conclusion, the results in the present study highlight the importance of the role played by ridge height in coherent ISW transmission and reflection during oceanic wave–ridge interactions.     

Experimental study on the width of the turbulent area around bridge pier

At present, the method of calculating the turbulent flow width around the bridge pier is not given in the "Standard for Inland River Navigation" (GB50139-2004) in China, and the bridge designer usually increases the bridge span in order to ensure the navigation safety, which increases both of the structural design difficulty and the project investments. Therefore, it is extremely essential to give a research on the turbulent flow width around the bridge pier. Through the experiments of the fixed bed and the mobile bed, the factors influencing the turbulent flow width around the bridge pier have been analyzed, such as the approaching flow speed, the water depth, the angles between the bridge pier and the flow direction, the sizes of bridge pier, the shapes of the bridge pier, and the scouring around the bridge pier, etc. Through applying the dimension analytic method to the measured data, the formula of calculating the turbulent flow width around the bridge pier is then inferred.