One Obstacle among Many: The Filibuster and Majority Party Agendas

In today’s hyper-partisan environment, scholars and commentators contend that the filibuster poses a nearly insuperable obstacle to a Senate majority party’s agenda, limiting Congress’s output to non-controversial measures. Drawing on data about congressional majority party agenda priorities from 1985 to 2020 we identify when and how majority party legislative efforts fell short of success and take stock of the degree to which the filibuster was the primary culprit. Not surprisingly, our data confirm that the filibuster is a significant problem for majority party agendas. But an even more common cause of failure is the majority party’s inability to agree among themselves. Despite increased voting cohesion generally, parties in the polarized era still routinely struggle to bridge their own internal divides.

High-resolution ultrasound in the diagnosis of failed carpal tunnel decompression: a study of 35 cases

We used high-resolution ultrasound to examine 35 median nerves (35 patients) with failed carpal tunnel decompression to identify the cause of failure. The carpal tunnel was examined before revision surgery, and the results were correlated with surgical findings. The cross-sectional area was measured, and nerve morphology was analysed at the sites of compression. We found persistent median nerve compression in 30 out of 35 patients. In 20 patients, the compression was caused by a residual transverse carpal ligament, in four by perineural fibrosis, in five by both of these causes and in one by tenosynovitis. In four patients, evidence of median nerve injury with an epineural/fascicular lesion was detected; and in one, no abnormalities were found. Surgical findings were consistent with the ultrasound findings except in one patient where tenosynovitis was associated with a giant cell tumour, which was missed by ultrasound. High-resolution ultrasound can provide helpful information in preoperative diagnosis of failed carpal tunnel decompression with good correlation between the ultrasound and surgical findings. Level of evidence: IV

Review of Marginal Adaptation and Fracture Resistance of Computer Aided Design/Computer Aided Manufacturer (CAD‐CAM) Fabricated Endo-crowns

Background: Zirconia-based restorations have become more popular in dentistry during the last two decades. Patients choose metal-free restorations, preferring materials with similar attributes to natural teeth and similar light scattering characteristics, resulting in a nice esthetic appearance. Restoring a root canal treated teeth is one of the hot topics today. endo crown materials can be either; feldspathic, glass-ceramic, monolithic hybrid ceramic or composite material. Considering the marginal gap of endocrown, an important cause of failure of treatment, the current study evaluated the marginal gap of CAD‐CAM concocted endo-crowns. Materials and Methods: This research is an analysis systemic review study was conducted between January 2020 and October 2021. We followed the PRISMA principles and recorded this systematic review using the PROSPERO database to find and identify published literature related to the marginal adaptation of CAD-CAM-fabricated endocrown. The search will include all relevant articles through the end of 2021. Finally, 24 papers on marginal clearance and fracture resistance in coronary arteries were reviewed. Results: The electronic database search yielded 98 studies that were relevant. After cross-referencing, further seven studies were added. After a full-text analysis and duplicate reduction, 74 of the 98 articles were eliminated. 5 clinical (prospective) studies, 19 in vitro studies were found. Conclusion: This analysis of the recent literature on the marginal seating integrity and fracture resistance of CAD/CAM made-up endo-crowns showed that the endo-crown had superior marginal seating integrity than classical full crown. CAM/CAM showed statistically significant higher mean fracture resistance than MAD/MAM.

EVALUATION OF THE ROOT CAUSE OF FAILURE IN A CRAWLER CRANE MACHINE USING HYBRID MCDM MODEL

A real-life case study has been presented in this paper, where a crawler crane machine is investigated for the root cause of failure, using an expert opinion-based technique which comprises of an integrated model which is based on an Intuitionistic Fuzzy TOPSIS model Exponential related function, and the intuitionistic entropy model. The main contribution and advantages of the proposed approach are in the use of a subjective and objective model for the computation of the criteria weight, which allows for complete assessment of the actual performance and value of each of the criteria. The application of the exponential-related function, which represent the aggregated effect of the positive and negative evaluations in the performance ratings of the alternatives based on the intuitionistic fuzzy set (IFS) data used. And finally, the method ranks all alternatives using the exponential-related function matrix, which accounts for the expert's attitudinal character, which a strong influencing factor in subjective assessments like the one used in some of the root cause of failure/reliability analysis.

Combustion Fault Simulation of Diesel Engine Based on AVL-FIRE Software

Marine diesel engine is developing towards the direction of precision, automation and systematization, and it has the characteristics of complex structure and many parts. If it breaks down, it will affect the operation safety of the whole ship. If it is serious, accidents may occur, which may cause maritime accidents. Therefore, how to prevent the occurrence of marine diesel engine failure and analyze the cause of failure after the accident has been paid more and more attention by scholars at home and abroad. In the simulation study of the working process of diesel engine, for different types of diesel engines, the laws of combustion process are different, even for the same diesel engine in different working conditions, the combustion laws are also different, which will cause great difficulties to study the combustion process. Using computer simulation technology, the physical calculation model of diesel engine system is established by simulating the typical combustion faults of marine diesel engine. AVL-FIRE software is used to simulate different faults of diesel engine combustion process, and the changes of various performance parameters of diesel engine under corresponding faults are obtained, so as to grasp its working state macroscopically, and provide relevant basis for the design, optimization and operation management of diesel engine system.

Seepage behavior assessment of earth-rock dams based on Bayesian network

Seepage behavior assessment is an important part of the safety operation assessment of earth-rock dams, because of insufficient intelligent analysis of monitoring information, abnormal phenomena or measured values are often ignored or improperly processed. To improve the intelligent performance of the monitoring system, this article has established an assessment framework covering project quality, maintenance status, monitoring data analysis, and on-site inspection based on the relevant norms of seepage safety assessment of earth-rock dams and the expert survey scoring method, and the Leaky Noisy-OR Gate extended model were used to determine the probability of events, and the dynamic and static Bayesian networks used to assess the possibility of seepage failure of earth-rock dams and diagnose the most likely cause of failure. The function of static and dynamic Bayesian networks to assess the seepage behavior of earth-rock dams, abnormal measured values, and causes of anomalies can make up for the limitations of reservoir management personnel and monitoring system in seepage failure experience and seepage knowledge of earth-rock dams and enable better handling of abnormal phenomena and monitoring information, making the monitoring system more intelligent.

Behavior of Non-Shear-Strengthened UHPC Beams under Flexural Loading: Influence of Reinforcement Percentage

In the present work, the structural responses of 12 UHPC beams to four-point loading conditions were experimentally and analytically studied. The inclusion of a fibrous system in the UHPC material increased its compressive and flexural strengths by 31.5% and 237.8%, respectively. Improved safety could be obtained by optimizing the tensile reinforcement ratio (ρ) for a UHPC beam. The slope of the moment–curvature before and after steel yielding was almost typical for all beams due to the inclusion of a hybrid fibrous system in the UHPC. Moreover, we concluded that as ρ increases, the deflection ductility exponentially increases. The cracking response of the UHPC beams demonstrated that increasing ρ notably decreases the crack opening width of the UHPC beams at the same service loading. The cracking pattern the beams showed that increasing the bar reinforcement percentages notably enhanced their initial stiffness and deformability. Moreover, the flexural cracks were the main cause of failure for all beams; however, flexure shear cracks were observed in moderately reinforced beams. The prediction efficiency of the proposed analytical model was established by performing a comparative study on the experimental and analytical ultimate moment capacity of the UHPC beams. For all beams, the percentage of the mean calculated moment capacity to the experimentally observed capacity approached 100%.

Opportunistic perfect preventive maintenance policy in presence of masked data

In this paper, the maintenance optimization problem of multi-component system is considered. It is assumed that the exact cause of system failure might be masked. That is, the exact cause of failure is unknown, and we only know that it belongs to a set called mask set. Both opportunistic perfect preventive maintenance (OPPM) and perfect corrective maintenance are considered. Threshold of OPPM and inter-inspection interval are considered as decision parameters which are optimized using long-run cost rate criteria. The applicability of the proposed maintenance policy is investigated using an illustrative example.