Patrick Laycock

Estimation of extremes in corrosion engineering

Summary This paper reviews a number of extreme value models which have been applied to corrosion problems. The techniques considered are used to model and predict the statistical behaviour of corrosion extremes, such as the largest pit, thinnest wall, maximum penetration or similar assessment of corrosion phenomenon. These techniques can be applied to measurements over a regular grid or to measurements of selected extremes, and can be adapted to accommodate all values over a selected threshold, or a selected number of the largest values-or only the single largest value. Data can come from one coupon or several coupons, and can be modelled to allow for dependence on environmental conditions, surface area examined, and duration of exposure or of experimentation. The techniquesare demonstrated on data from laboratory experiments and also on data collected in an industrial context.

The Burdens of Rural Ministry: Identifying and Exploring the Correlates of Five Causes of Stress among Rural Anglican Clergy Serving in Multi-Parish Benefices

This volume includes a wide range of papers that explore individual and institutional aspects of religion from a social-science perspective. The special section has articles from research groups in Europe, the USA and Australia on clergy work-related psychological health, stress, burnout and coping strategies. The general papers include studies on coping strategies among Buddhists, gender differences in response to church decline, teenage participation in religion, social capital among Friends of Cathedrals, psychological profiles of clergy, education effects on Roman Catholic deacons, and an analysis of prayer requests. Together these papers form a valuable collection indicating the depth and vibrancy of research in these fields

The Urban Heat Island in Manchester 1996–2011

The urban heat island intensity (difference between a semi-rural and urban dry bulb air temperature, urban heat island intensity) has been analysed for Manchester using data from 1996 to 2011. The semi-rural sites were airfields and the urban site was 2 km from the centre of Manchester. Although the urban site was not as developed as the city centre it showed a significant urban heat island intensity. A stochastic model developed from the data showed that the maximum mean daily value would be about 6℃ which compared well with more detailed measurements. However, there was a highly significant trend of increasing urban heat island intensity which by the end of the century could add 2.4 K to the predicted climate change increase. An analysis of the urban morphology showed that the urban site had indeed become more urban over 9 years of the study, losing green spaces which mitigate against the urban heat island intensity. Practical application : The results from this paper will allow building and HVAC designers to consider the increase in the urban heat island in their designs when using future weather data. Although the results are for Manchester, similar trends may well apply to other similar-sized cities. Designers should consider the future weather data available, as their buildings will last for a considerable time so they should be as future-proofed as possible.

Exploring the factor structure of the Francis Psychological Type Scales among a sample of Anglican clergy in England

ABSTRACT The Francis Psychological Type Scales (FPTS) were designed to provide a fresh conceptualisation and operationalisation of psychological type theory suitable for application within self-report quantitative studies in the individual differences tradition. The present study tests the factor structure of this instrument among a sample of 722 Anglican clergy. The Varimax Rotated Solution with Kaiser Normalisation recovered the hypothesised location of 74 of the 80 items across four factors with factor weightings of or above .38. The FPTS are commended for use.

Assessing clergy work-related psychological health: reliability and validity of the Francis Burnout Inventory

ABSTRACT Drawing on the classic model of balanced affect, the Francis Burnout Inventory (FBI) conceptualised good work-related psychological health among clergy in terms of negative affect being balanced by positive affect. In the FBI negative affect is assessed by the Scale of Emotional Exhaustion in Ministry (SEEM) and positive affect is assessed by the Satisfaction in Ministry Scale (SIMS). In support of the idea of balanced affect, previous work had shown a significant interaction between the effects of SEEM and SIMS scores, showing that the mitigating effects of positive affect on burnout increased with increasing levels of negative affect. In this paper a convenience sample of 155 priests serving with the Roman Catholic Church in Italy have been assessed on the Purpose in Life Scale (PILS) as an independent measure of well-being and concurrently on the two scales, SEEM and SIMS. Crucially for confirming the idea of balanced affect, there was a significant interaction between the effects of SEEM and SIMS scores on scores recorded on the PILS, confirming that the mitigating effects of satisfaction in ministry on purpose increased with increasing levels of emotional exhaustion.

Work-Related Psychological Health among Catholic Religious in Italy: Testing the Balanced Affect Model

Drawing on the classic model of balanced affect, the Francis Burnout Inventory (FBI) conceptualised good work-related psychological health among religious leaders in terms of negative affect being balanced by positive affect. In the FBI negative affect is assessed by the Scale of Emotional Exhaustion in Ministry (SEEM) and positive affect is assessed by the Satisfaction in Ministry Scale (SIMS). A sample of 156 religious leaders (95 men and 61 women) serving with the Roman Catholic Church in Italy completed SEEM and SIMS together with an independent measure of wellbeing. The results confirm the hypothesis that high SIMS scores reduced the negative effects of high SEEM scores on the independent measure of wellbeing.

Design of Experiments for Extreme Value Distributions

In this paper experimental designs are considered for classic extreme value distribution models. A careful review of the literature provides some information matrices in order to study experimental designs. Regression models and their design implications are discussed for some situations involving extreme values. These include a constant variance and a constant coefficient of variation model plus an application in the context of strength of materials. Relative efficiencies calculated with respect to D-optimality are used to compare the designs given in this example.

When is an Equally-Weighted Design D-optimal?

We discuss conditions under which an equally weighted design is D-optimal. The concept of a model being maximally invariant with respect to a set is introduced and is shown to be useful in this work. Several illustrative examples are given, including two biomedical applications using compartmental and segmented models.

Applications of a General Stable Law Regression Model

Abstract In this paper we present a method for performing regression with stable disturbances. The method of maximum likelihood is used to estimate both distribution and regression parameters. Our approach utilises a numerical integration procedure to calculate the stable density, followed by sequential quadratic programming optimisation procedures to obtain estimates and standard errors. A theoretical justification for the use of stable law regression is given followed by two real world practical examples of the method. First, we fit the stable law multiple regression model to housing price data and examine how the results differ from normal linear regression. Second, we calculate the beta coefficients for 26 companies from the Financial Times Ordinary Shares Index.

On Generating and Classifying All Q N-M Regular Designs for Square-Free Q

By extending results developed for q a prime or a prime power we develop methods for generating all q n-m regular designs for q a product of distinct primes, along with their confounded interactions or defining contrasts. The method of generation produces a unique and decodable number for each such design and explicit formulae are supplied for each step of the coding and decoding algorithm. The case where q is a product of two separate primes is studied in detail, with indications given for extensions to more primes and different values of q for each factor, this latter case covering in particular the situation where each q is a single, possibly distinct, prime.