Wednesday, December 25, 2019

Social Studies Megan Baldwin s The Epic Of Gilgamesh

Social Studies Megan Baldwin B3 11-16-15 Mesopotamia By Megan Baldwin M is for Medicine M is for Medicine. Medicine is how they would cure the ill. The Sumerians used ingredients from plants, animals, and minerals. They also used a wide variety of ingredients, including milk, salt, turtle shell, fig and salt. The physicians or scholars would prescribe the medicines you need by looking at your symptoms, or what part of the body it was used in. There are more than 420 lists on clay tablets found just for medicine. E is for the Epic of Gilgamesh E is for the Epic of Gilgamesh. An epic is a long poem that tells the story of a hero. The Epic of Gilgamesh is the world s oldest epic. It was first recorded in 2000 B.C. on clay tablets. This epic is about Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu. It teaches a valuable lesson to appreciate what you have. S is for Surplus S is for surplus. A surplus is having more than you need. After the Sumerians invented the irrigation system, they had more food than they needed. This caused them to have a food surplus. When they had food surpluses, it meant that they didn’t all have to farm. This is when they started getting other jobs, like making pots out of clay. O is for Oldest Society O is for Oldest Society. Mesopotamia is the oldest society. Society means a group of people living together in a

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Foundations of Public Administration - 935 Words

Jayson Allen PA 6610 FOUNDATIONS OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION CASE ANALYSIS The MOVE Disaster Jack H. Nagel Quality leadership is a telling sign of a successful organization. When given the opportunity to guide or direct others, a leader is capable of drawing individuals or groups together to accomplish certain goals. Given the responsibility to address a problem that had developed over a span of many months concerning a cult (an unorthodox or misguided group of extremist) called MOVE, newly elected Philadelphia Mayor, Wilson Goode did not exercise his authority as the elected leader by working meticulously with the other city officials and offices to shut down MOVE operations and protect the city’s residents from their†¦show more content†¦Sometimes the very qualities that make a leader successful in one situation can impede his ability to rationally handle other situations. Understanding the reasoning behind why certain people make certain decisions in certain situations will never be â€Å"cut and dry† because when viewed through a psychological viewpoint, know ing the humanistic characteristics affecting decision making is important in getting a clearer picture. Personally, I would have asked for counsel from the closest of my working city officials and even someone higher up whom I knew and trusted. I am not expected, as a human being, to have all the answers but I can make rational choices given the possible outcomes. In becoming familiar now with the events surrounding the MOVE disaster, I as a future public administrator, can possibly recognize more easily when difficult situations may call for psychology and human relations understanding. This knowledge is a necessity for me personally as a mode of self critique, and for others in positions of leadership and authority that I may work closely with who may find themselves trapped but unable to recognize it. I consider this to be another example of recognizing that knowledge is power and to be a successful leader, knowing how to make theShow MoreRelatedGrant Data Resources Essay946 Words   |  4 Pagesthat provide public services and stimulate economic growth. Grants are one of the many forms of federal financial assistance and are used to support critical recovery initiatives, research and many other causes. The Foundation Center is another grant data reservoir, but provides listings of private funding. They provide a way to connect people with the resources they need through data analysis and training. 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It is the process by which non-elected government employees implement rules, regulations, laws, policiesRead MoreThe Classical Public Administrative Theory1158 Words   |  5 Pages CLASSICAL PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIVE THEORY Most twentieth century scholars in sociology and the science of administration consider the classical public administrative theory as the early form of organizational theory and accompanied by three main types of management: scientific, administration and bureaucracy. All of these management ideas are linked to different academics. `The scientific management was developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915); the AmericanRead MoreCloud Computing Provides A Shared Pool Of Resources1588 Words   |  7 Pagesthat permits clients to interim use processing foundation over the system, supplied as an administration by the cloud-supplier at potentially one or more levels of deliberation. Thus, a few business models quickly advanced to saddle this innovation by giving programming applications, programming stages, information stockpiling, processing foundation and equipment as administrations. While they allude to the centre distributed computing administrations, their between relations have been equivocal andRead MoreEducation And The Global Studies Foundation998 Words   |  4 PagesPolitical Science/Public Administration with a double minor in Journalism and Criminal Justice. I will use what I learned in college to become involved in the Global Studies Foundation. Their mission is to promote education by connecting with young individuals of different cultures. The communication skills I obtain through my degree in Public Administration, will definitely allow me to connect with millions and show them what the worth of an education is. I will help the foundation promote education

Sunday, December 8, 2019

Electrical Submersible Pump Survival Analysis free essay sample

Petroleum Engineer, Chevron Corp. Masters Degree Candidate Advisor Dr. Jianhua Huang With help from PHD Candidate Sophia Chen Department of Statistics, Texas AM, College Station MARCH 2011 ABSTRACT A common metric in Petroleum Engineering is â€Å"Mean Time Between Failures† or â€Å"Average Run Life†. It is used to characterize wells and artificial lift types, as a metric to compare production conditions, as well as a measure of the performance of a given surveillance monitoring program. Although survival curve analysis has been in existence for many years, the more rigorous analyses are relatively new in the area of Petroleum Engineering. We will write a custom essay sample on Electrical Submersible Pump Survival Analysis or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page This paper describes the basic theory behind survival analysis and the application of those techniques to the particular problem of Electrical Submersible Pump (ESP) Run Life. In addition to the general application of these techniques to an ESP data set, this paper also attempts to answer: Is there a significant difference between the survival curves of an ESP system with and without emulsion present in the well? Although survival curve analysis has been in existence for many years, the more rigorous analyses are relatively new in the area of Petroleum Engineering. As an example of the growth of these analysis techniques in the petroleum industry, Electrical Submersible Pump (ESP) survival analysis has been sparsely documented in technical journals for the last 20 years: ? ? ? First papers on the fitting of Weibull Exponential curves to ESP run life data in 1990 (Upchurch) 1993 (Patterson) Papers discussing the inclusion of censored data in 1996 (Brookbank) 1999 (Sawaryn) Paper discussing the use of Cox Regression in 2005 (Bailey) Unfortunately, the papers applying these techniques did little to transfer the knowledge to the practicing Petroleum Engineers. They shared the technical concepts and equations, but not the practical knowledge of how to apply them to real life problems or why these analyses improved upon the â€Å"take the average of the run life of failed wells† technique most commonly used. THEORY OF SURVIVAL ANALYSIS Survival analysis models the time it takes for events to occur and focuses on the distribution of the survival times. It can be used in many fields of study where survival time can indicate anything from time to death (medical studies) to time to equipment failure (reliability metrics). This paper will present three methodologies for estimating survival distributions as well as a technique for modeling the relationship between the survival distribution and one or more predictor variables (both covariates and factors). Appendix A has a list of important definitions relevant to survival analysis. KAPLAN MEIER (NON-PARAMETRIC) Non-parametric survival analysis characterizes survival functions without assuming an underlying distribution. The analysis is limited to reliability estimates for the failure times included in the data set (not prediction outside the range of data values) and comparison of survival curves one factor at a time (not multiple explanatory variables). A common non-parametric analysis is Kaplan Meier (KM). KM is characterized by a decreasing step function with jumps at the observed event times. The size of the jump depends on the number of events at that time t and the number of survivors prior to time t. The KM estimator provides the ability to estimate survival functions for right censored data. ti is the time at which a â€Å"death† occurs. i is the number of deaths that occur at time ti. When there is no censoring, ni is the number of survivors just prior to time ti. With censoring, ni is the number of survivors minus the number of censored units. The resulting curve, as noted, is a decreasing step function with jumps at the times of â€Å"death† ti. The MTBF is the area under th e resulting curve; the P50 (median) time to failure is (t) 0. 5. Upper and lower confidence intervals can be calculated for the KM curve using statistical software. A back-of-the-envelope calculation for the confidence interval is the KM estimator +/2 standard deviations. Greenwood’s formula can be used to estimate the variance for nonparametric data (Cran. R-project): Figure 1: Example Kaplan Meier survival curve showing estimate, 95% confidence interval, and censored data points When comparing two survival curves differing by a factor, a visual inspection of the null hypothesis Ho: survival curves are equal, can be conducted by plotting two survival curves and their confidence intervals. If the confidence intervals do not overlap, there is significant evidence that the survival curves are different (with alpha lt; 0. 05%) COX PROPORTIONAL HAZARD (SEMI-PARAMETRIC) Semi-Parametric analysis enables more insight than the Non-Parametric method. It can estimate the survival curve from a set of data as well as account for right censoring, but it also conducts regression based on multiple factors/covariates as well a judge the contribution of a given factor/covariate to a survival curve. CPH is not as efficient as a parametric model (Weibull or Exponential), but the proportional hazards assumption is less restrictive than the parametric assumptions (Fox). Instead of assuming a distribution, the proportional hazards model assumes that the failure rate (hazard rate) of a unit is the product of: ? a baseline failure rate (which doesn’t need to be specified and is only a function of time) and a positive function which incorporates the effects of factors covariates xi1 – xik (independent of time) This model is called semi-parametric because while the baseline hazard can take any form, the covariates enter the model linearly. Given two obser vations i i’ with the same baseline failure rate function, but that differ in their x values (ie two wells with different operating parameters xk), the hazard ratio for these two observations are independent of time: The above ratio is why the Cox model is a proportional-hazards model; even though the baseline failure rate h0(t) is unspecified, the ? parameters in the Cox model can still be estimated by the method of partial likelihood. After fitting the Cox model, it is possible to get an estimate of the baseline failure rate and survival function (Fox). A result of the regression is an estimate for the various ? coefficients and an R-square value describing the amount of variability explained in the hazard function by fitting this model. Relative contributions of factors/covariates can be interpreted as: ? ? ? gt;0, covariate decreases the survival time as value increases, by factor of exp(? ) ? 0 scale; kgt;0 shape ?(ln(2))1/k The Weibull shape parameter, k, is also known as the Weibull slope. Values of k less than 1 indicate that the failure rate is decreasing with time (infant failures). Values of k equal to 1 indicate a failure rate that does not vary over time (random failures). Values of k greater than 1 indicate that the failure rate is increasing with time (mechanical wear out) (Weibull). A change in the scale parameter, ? , has the same effect on the distribution as a change of the X axis scale. Increasing the value of the scale parameter, while holding the shape parameter constant, has the effect of stretching out the PDF and survival curve (Weibull). Figure 2: Example Weibull curves with varying shape scale parameters The Weibull regression model is the same as the Cox regression model with the Weibull distribution as the baseline hazard. The proportional hazards assumption used by the CPH method, when applied to a survival curve with a Weibull function baseline hazard, only holds if two survival curves vary by a difference in the scale parameter (? ) not by a difference in the shape parameter (k). If goodness of fit to the Weibull distribution can be achieved, a confidence interval can be calculated for the curve, the median value and its confidence interval can be calculated, and a comparison of the differences in two survival curves can be conducted. Goodness of fit can be tested in R using an Anderson Darling calculation and verified with a Weibull probability plot. Poor fit in the tails of the Weibull distribution is a common occurrence for reliability data due to infant mortality and longer than expected wear out time. STEPWISE COX W EIBULL REGRESSION Given a large number of explanatory variables and the larger number of potential interactions, not all of those variables may be necessary to develop a model that characterizes the survival curve. One way of determining a model is by using Stepwise model selection through minimization of AIC (Akaike Information Criterion). This model selection technique allows variables to enter/exit the model using their impact on the AIC calculated at that step. AIC is an improvement over maximizing the R-Square in that it’s a criterion that rewards goodness of fit while penalizing for model complexity. APPLICATION TO AN ESP DATA SET As stated previously, these survival analysis techniques can be applied to many types of data in many industries ranging from survival data for people in a medical study to survival data for equipment in a reliability study. These methodologies have many uses in the petroleum industry; from surface equipment system and component reliability used by facility and reliability engineers, to well and downhole system and component reliability used by petroleum and production engineers. As an example, this paper illustrates the use of these techniques on the run life of Electrical Submersible Pumps (ESP). ESPs are a type of artificial lift for bringing produced liquids to the surface from within a wellbore. Appendix B includes a diagram of an ESP. For this paper, the run life will refer to the run life of an ESP system, not the individual components within the ESP system. While this paper focuses on ESP systems, these same techniques could be applied to other areas of Petroleum Engineer interests including run life of individual ESP components, other types of artificial lift, entire well systems, etc. DATA DESCRIPTION ESP-RIFTS JIP (Electrical Submersible Pump Reliability Information and Failure Tracking System Joint Industry Project) is a group of 14 international oilfield operators who have joined efforts to gain a better understanding of circumstances that lead to a success or failure in a specific ESP application. The JIP includes access to a data set of 566 oil fields, 27861 wells, 89232 ESP installations, and 182 explanatory factors/covariates related to either the description of the ESP application or the description of the ESP failure. For the analysis described in this paper, a subset of the data has been used, restricted to: ? ? ? ? ? ? Observations related to Chevron operated fields observations with no conflicting information (as defined by the JIP’s data validation techniques) factors that were related to the description of the ESP application (excluded 27) factors not confounded with or multiples of other factors (excluded 30) factors with a large number (gt;90%) of non-missing data points (excluded 78) factors that were not free-form comment fields (excluded 27) Appendix C has a list of the original 182 variables with comments on why they were removed from the analyzed data set, below is a table of the 20 remaining explanatory variables included in this analysis. SUMMARY TABLE OF DATA INCLUDED IN THE CPH/REGRESSION ANALYSIS: OBSERVATIONS: 1588 DESCRIPTION RunLife Censor Country Offshore Oil Water Gas Scale CO2 Emulsion CtrlPanelType NoPumpHouse PumpVendor NoPumpStage NoSealHouse NoMotorHouse MotorPowerRating NoIntakes NoCableSys CableSize DHMonitorInstalled DeployMethod COVARIATE/FACTOR # OF LEVELS Response Censor Flag (0, 1) Factor (7 levels) Factor (2 levels) Covariate Covariate Covariate Factor (5 levels) Covariate Factor (3 levels) Factor (2 levels) Covariate Factor (2levels) Covariate Covariate Covariate Covariate Covariate Covariate Covariate Factor (2 levels) Factor (2 levels) DESCRIPTION Time between date put on production and date stopped or censored 1 if ESP failure 0 if still running or stopped for a different reason Country Field in which the ESP is operated Indication of whether the ESP was an onshore or offshore installation Estimated average surface oil rate (m3/day) Estimated average surface water rate (m3/day) Estimated average surface gas rate (1000m3/day) Qualitative level of scaling present in the well % of CO2 present in the well Qualitative level of emulsion present in the well Type of surface control panel used Number of pump housing s Pump Vendor Number of pump stages Number of seal housings Number of motor housings Motor rated power at 60Hz (HP) Number of intakes Number of cable systems Size of cable Flag for installation of a downhole monitor Method of ESP deployment into the well FINDING THE P50 TIME TO FAILURE FOR A DATASET Example 1: Using the entire data set, what is the P50 estimate for the runtime of a Chevron ESP? The answers differ considerably for the 4 calculation types: METHODOLOGY Mean or Median Kaplan Meier Median CPH Median INCLUDES CENSORED? No Yes Yes P50 ESTIMATE (DAYS) Mean: 563 Median: 439 1044 1043 ASSUMPTION None None None (as no comparison of levels/covariates, essentially same results as KM) Anderson Darling GOF for Weibull Distribution N/A N/A N/A ASSUMPTIONS MET ? Weibull Median Yes 1067 NO (rejected the null hypothesis of good fit, due to poor fit in the tails) In this example, the biggest impact on the difference between the methods is the inclusion of censored data. A large number of the ESPs in this data set have been running for gt;3000 days without a failure and were excluded in the often used calculation of the average run life of all failed ESPs. Given that the Weibull distribution did not pass the Anderson Darling goodness of fit test, the most appropriate calculation would have been the KM or CMH. Appendix E has the output from the various methodologies. The interpretation of these results is that the P50 estimate of run life for an ESP installation in Chevron is ~ 1044 days. Additional, output from the KM analysis sets the 95% confidence interval at 952 to 1113 days. Figure 3: Comparison of estimation methods for full data survival curve. Note the deviation of the Weibull in the tails of the data. COMPARING TWO SURVIVAL CURVES DIFFERING BY A FACTOR Example 2: Using the 2 level factor emulsion, does the presence of emulsion in the well make a significant difference in the P50 run life of an ESP system? METHODOLOGY Mean or Median Kaplan Meier Median CPH Median INCLUDE CENSOR? No Yes Yes EMULSION P50 (DAYS) Mean 600 Median 458 606 533 NO EMULSION P50 (DAYS) Mean 536 Median 424 1508 1408 SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE? Don’t know Yes (visual Inspection of CI) Yes, with a Likelihood ratio test and a pvalue of 0, reject that B’s are the same. Yes, with a z test statistic and a pvalue of 0, reject that the scale values are the same. INTERPRETATION Well performance is about the same Wells without emulsion perform much better Wells without emulsion survive longer. Exp(B) indicates 2. 5 times increased survival time for no emulsion. Wells without emulsion survive longer. Scale parameter value indicates 2. 75 times increased survival time for no emulsion. ASSUMPTIONS MET ? No. (Reject null hypothesis of prop. hazards with a p value of 0. 01. ) No. Reject null hypothesis of good of fit due to poor fit in the tails) Weibull Median Yes 531 1463 The more complex the methodology used, the more information is available to interpret the results. Again, the addition of censored data resulted in a very different interpretation of the data than just using the mean/median value of all failed ESPs; not just in the order of magnitude of the results, but also determination of which condition resulted in a longer run life. The results of both the CPH Weibull methodologies are suspect due to their failure to meet the prerequisite assumptions. Looking at the plots, it is apparent that the fit is poor in the tails. Appendix F has the output from the various methodologies The interpretation of these results is that wells without emulsion have gt; a 2x increase in their P50 run life than wells with emulsion. It should be noted that given the other factors that differ in the operation of these ESPs, this difference may not be fully attributed only to the difference in emulsion, but this interpretation should lead to further investigation. Figure 4: KM estimated survival curves for ESPs with and without emulsion with confidence interval Figure 5: Comparison of estimation methods (KM, CPH, Weibull) for ESPs with and without emulsion CHOOSING THE VARIABLES THAT CHARACTERIZE A SURVIVAL CURVE Example 3: Of the variables collected by the JIP, which most describe the survival function? Do the variables collected in the dataset capture the variation in the survival function? As stated previously, both Weibull Cox regression fit a model using explanatory variables. The introduction of Stepwise variable selection to that regression allows the preferential fitting of the model by minimizing the AIC. As Weibull regression is a special case of Cox regression with a Weibull baseline hazard function, and as Cox regression has less restrictive assumptions than parametric regression, this example will focus solely on Cox regression using Stepwise

Sunday, December 1, 2019

The Functions And History Of The Roman Senate Essays -

The Functions And History Of The Roman Senate The Functions and History of the Roman Senate In today's modern world representative government is the norm. Nearly all governments are ruled by their citizens via a republic or some other type of governing body. However, in the ancient world, this standard of democratic government had not yet taken hold; political control still belonged to the few elite, rich, and powerful persons and influential families. Thus, we have a contrast between governments of the ancient world and our modern day governments. In other words, the past generally denotes monarchy, empire, or absolute control. While modern government usually implies republic, voting, or democratic control. However, an analysis of Roman government reveals that it does not exactly fit purely into either mold of government. It was a mixture of many elements, democratic, monarchial, and aristocratic. The purpose of this report will be to provide a general overview of the structure, power, and function of one component of the Roman government- that is, the Roman Senate. Also, this paper will serve to provide a historical context for the Senate, including both the origins and demise of this governmental body and will discuss the issues of class conflict as it related to the Senate's power and jurisdiction. There were three main components of the Roman Republic. The first of which represents the monarchial element surviving from when Rome had a king (this will be discussed in greater length and detail below). Two magistrates or consuls had ultimate civil and military authority. The two consuls held their office for one year (they were elected by Roman citizens) and then after their term had expired, entered the Senate for life. Each consul could veto the actions of the other, thus serving as a check for one individual gaining too much political power and therefore prevented (at least temporarily) the Republic from being undermined by a potential dictator. Their primary duties included leading the army, serving as judges, and having ceremonial religious duties. The next governmental institution, which represented the democratic element of the Roman Republic, are the Assemblies. These Assemblies were theoretically made up of all adult male Romans (the only exception is that they had to be present at the meetings). Their primary functions were the annual elections of consuls, approving or rejecting laws, and deciding issues of war and peace. One great flaw of this body was that the wealthier citizens voted first and thereby had a great influence on how the rest of the Assembly voted. Finally, we come to the focus of this report, that is, the Roman Senate. The Senate represented the aristocratic and elitist element of Roman government and was a collection of patrician citizens (the patrician/plebian conflict will be described in more depth later) who served as the legislative branch of the government as well as an advisory body. In the beginning of the Republic, the Senate contained 300 members, the members themselves were chosen from the patrician class, ex-consuls, and other officers who served for life. By the time that Julius Caesar gained power, the Senates membership had increased to nearly 800 people. Despite having a mostly advisory role, by the 3rd Century BC the Senate had been able to increase its influence and power. Some of the powers that it gained were that it prepared legislation to be put before the Assembly, it administered finances, dealt for foreign affairs, and supervised the official state religions. However, despite its increase in power, the Senate did not have the power to make laws, by only issue decrees known as Decreta or Senatus Consulta, which basically served as official recommendations and while they carried some weight, they still had no actual binding and legal authority. Another interesting aspect of the Roman Senate was that Senators received no pay for their services as government officials. During the republic, the most important activity for the small group of patrician families that controlled the Senate was the pursuit of political power for themselves, their family, and friends. A senator was expected to greet everyone warmly and by name, and was actually assisted by a slave called a nomenclator whose duty it was to memorize names and help identify people. Meetings of