On the safety assessment of an automatic train operation system

The paper examines the automatic train operation system as part of the locomotive control and protection system, the remote supervision centre’s means for control of onboard and trackside machine vision facilities. The focus is on the dependence of the system’s safety and dependability on the dependability characteristics of its components and adverse weather effects. The criteria of a system’s wrong-side and right-side failures were defined, the graph models were constructed of the safety and dependability states of an automatic train operation system. The Markovian graph method of calculating the safety and dependability of complex systems was substantiated. That allowed defining such key safety indicators of an automatic train operation system as the mean time to wrong-side failure, probability of wrong-side failure, wrong-side failure rate. The study established that the safety of an automatic train operation system primarily depends on the dependability of machine vision facilities. The growth of the system’s wrong-side failure rate is limited to half the failure rate of machine vision facilities. It was also established that the dependability of an automatic train operation system is defined by the failure rate of a locomotive control and protection system and the failure rate of machine vision facilities. The conducted analysis allows concluding that in order to achieve an acceptable level of safety of an automatic train operation system, efforts should focus on machine vision redundancy, ensuring the SIL4 functional safety of on-board and trackside machine vision facilities, as well as regular comparison of the outputs of on-board and trackside machine vision facilities, redundant output comparison, integration of the outputs in motion. Additionally, adverse weather effects are to be countered by improving the efficiency of machine learning of the machine vision software.

Pocus as a tool to avoid diagnostic errors in covid-19 era

X-ray flips and wrong labelling has been uncomfortably common, and often results in wrong side intervention. Wrong side surgery is indeed the most dramatic and visible form of human errors. Until the 1999 Institute of Medicine report ‘To Err is Human’, the medical fraternity was largely unaware of such preventable medical errors and near misses. We herein, describe a case where X-ray flip and mislabelling led to wrong side intervention in a COVID-19 ICU. Active errors in human performance are inevitable while practising medicine in the current COVID-19 pandemic where difficulties in performing comprehensive systemic examination with the protective gear on, long working hours, work stress, emotions, and fatigue interplay with the errors in technology and increase the chances of errors. We propose the use of point of care ultrasound (POCUS) in COVID-19 ICU’s to aid in the diagnosis and management.

Analysis of medication errors during anaesthesia in the first 4000 incidents reported to webAIRS

Medication error is a well-recognised cause of harm to patients undergoing anaesthesia. From the first 4000 reports in the webAIRS anaesthetic incident reporting system, we identified 462 reports of medication errors. These reports were reviewed iteratively by several reviewers paying particular attention to their narratives. The commonest error category was incorrect dose (29.4%), followed by substitution (28.1%), incorrect route (7.6%), omission (6.5%), inappropriate choice (5.8%), repetition (5.4%), insertion (4.1%), wrong timing (3.5%), wrong patient (1.5%), wrong side (1.5%) and others (6.5%). Most (58.9%) of the errors resulted in at least some harm (20.8% mild, 31.0% moderate and 7.1% severe). Contributing factors to the medication errors included the presence of look-alike medications, storage of medications in the incorrect compartment, inadequate labelling of medications, pressure of time, anaesthetist fatigue, unfamiliarity with the medication, distraction, involvement of multiple people and poor communication. These data add to current evidence suggesting a persistent and concerning failure effectively to address medication safety in anaesthesia. The wide variation in the nature of the errors and contributing factors underline the need for increased systematic and multifaceted efforts underpinned by a strengthening of the current focus on safety culture to improve medication safety in anaesthesia. This will require the concerted and committed engagement of all concerned, from practitioners at the clinical workface, to those who fund and manage healthcare.

The Wrong Side of the Tracks

<p>Christchurch was struck by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake on the 22 February 2011. The quake devastated the city, taking lives and causing widespread damage to the inner city and suburban homes. The central city lost over half its buildings and over 7000 homes were condemned throughout Christchurch. The loss of such a great number of homes has created the requirement for new housing to replace those that were lost. Many of which were located in the eastern, less affluent, suburbs. The response to the housing shortage is the planned creation of large scale subdivisions on the outskirts of the city. Whilst this provides the required housing it creates additional sprawl to a city that does not need it. The extension of Christchurch’s existing suburban sprawl puts pressure on roading and pushes residents further out of the city, creating a disconnection between them. Christchurch’s central city had a very small residential population prior to the earthquakes with very few options for dense inner city living. The proposed rebuild of the inner city calls for a new ‘dense, vibrant and diverse central hub’. Proposing the introduction of new residential units within the central city. However the placement of the low-rise housing in a key attribute of the rebuild, the eastern green ‘Frame’, diminishes its value as open green space. The proposed housing will also be restrictive in its target market and therefore the idea of a ‘vibrant’ inner city is difficult to achieve. This thesis acts as response to the planned rebuild of inner Christchurch. Proposing the creation of a model for inner city housing which provides an alternative option to the proposed housing and existing and ongoing suburban sprawl. The design options were explored through a design-led process were the options were critiqued and developed. The ‘final’ proposal is comprises of three tall towers, aptly named the Triple Towers, which condense the proposed low-rise housing from an 11000 square metre footprint to combined footprint of 1500 square metres. The result is an expansion of the publicly available green space along the proposed eastern frame of the city. The height of the project challenges the height restrictions and is provocative in its proposal and placement. The design explores the relationships between the occupants, the building, the ‘Frame’ and the central city. The project is discussed through an exploration of the architecture of Rem Koolhaas, Renzo Piano and Oscar Niemeyer. Rather than their architecture being taken as a direct influence on which the design is based the discussion revolves around how and why each piece of comparative architecture is relevant to the designs desired outcome.</p>

The Wrong Side of the Tracks

<p>Christchurch was struck by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake on the 22 February 2011. The quake devastated the city, taking lives and causing widespread damage to the inner city and suburban homes. The central city lost over half its buildings and over 7000 homes were condemned throughout Christchurch. The loss of such a great number of homes has created the requirement for new housing to replace those that were lost. Many of which were located in the eastern, less affluent, suburbs. The response to the housing shortage is the planned creation of large scale subdivisions on the outskirts of the city. Whilst this provides the required housing it creates additional sprawl to a city that does not need it. The extension of Christchurch’s existing suburban sprawl puts pressure on roading and pushes residents further out of the city, creating a disconnection between them. Christchurch’s central city had a very small residential population prior to the earthquakes with very few options for dense inner city living. The proposed rebuild of the inner city calls for a new ‘dense, vibrant and diverse central hub’. Proposing the introduction of new residential units within the central city. However the placement of the low-rise housing in a key attribute of the rebuild, the eastern green ‘Frame’, diminishes its value as open green space. The proposed housing will also be restrictive in its target market and therefore the idea of a ‘vibrant’ inner city is difficult to achieve. This thesis acts as response to the planned rebuild of inner Christchurch. Proposing the creation of a model for inner city housing which provides an alternative option to the proposed housing and existing and ongoing suburban sprawl. The design options were explored through a design-led process were the options were critiqued and developed. The ‘final’ proposal is comprises of three tall towers, aptly named the Triple Towers, which condense the proposed low-rise housing from an 11000 square metre footprint to combined footprint of 1500 square metres. The result is an expansion of the publicly available green space along the proposed eastern frame of the city. The height of the project challenges the height restrictions and is provocative in its proposal and placement. The design explores the relationships between the occupants, the building, the ‘Frame’ and the central city. The project is discussed through an exploration of the architecture of Rem Koolhaas, Renzo Piano and Oscar Niemeyer. Rather than their architecture being taken as a direct influence on which the design is based the discussion revolves around how and why each piece of comparative architecture is relevant to the designs desired outcome.</p>

The Employee's Right to Freedom of Religion versus the Employer's Workplace Needs: An Ongoing Battle: TDF Network Africa (Pty) Ltd v Faris 2019 40 ILJ 326 (LAC)

The right to religion is well protected in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 (the Constitution) as well as attendant legislation. Section 15(1) of the Constitution provides that all persons have the right to freedom of religion. Section 31(1) of the Constitution then goes on to state that persons who belong to a religious community, amongst others, may not be denied the right to practise their religion with other members of that community. Section 9(3) of the Constitution prohibits the state from unfairly discriminating against any person directly or indirectly on several grounds, which include the ground of religion. Section 9(4) of the Constitution on the other hand prohibits any person from unfairly discriminating against any other person on the ground of religion, amongst others. These constitutional protections resonate in both the Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995 and the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998. Despite these protections, the right to freedom of religion is still a contested subject in the workplace, inter alia. The contestation intensifies when the right to freedom of religion results in an employee not being able to comply with one or more of the employer's workplace needs. Employers' who do not understand the balance that has to be struck between the employee's right to freedom of religion and its workplace needs will often find themselves on the wrong side of our labour laws if they dismiss an employee without having due regard to the employee's religion. This is what transpired in TDF Network Africa (Pty) Ltd v Faris 2019 40 ILJ 326 (LAC).

Means of Lexical Representation of Spatial Continuum in Early Stories of I. A. Bunin

The question of ways of creating a spatial continuum in the early stories of I. A. Bunin “On the wrong side”, “On the farm” and “On the Donets”, united by a single principle of nomination and included in the first book of the writer’s prose “To the end of the world” (1897) is considered in the article. The semantics of the title actualizes the spatial component of the author’s linguistic picture of the world, which determined the path of linguistic and stylistic analysis of the linguistic material of stories. The authors pay special attention to the means of lexical representation of space as one of the basic linguo-cognitive categories. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that the language material has been identified, systematized and described, which makes it possible to determine the individual author's characteristics in the creation of the spatial continuum of I. A. Bunin’s early stories. The relevance of the study is due to the appeal to the problems of cognitive linguistics. On the basis of statistical, descriptive and linguo-cognitive methods of analysis, the authors identify and describe the means of lexical representation of the spatial model created in the stories of I. A. Bunin, which is characterized by a clear structuredness and individuality of the author’s approach. In the course of the study, the authors come to conclusions that make it possible to characterize the features of the construction of space in the early stories of the writer, taking into account the individual characteristics of the author's world modeling, and also to analyze the linguistic parameters of the idiostyle of I. A. Bunin.