Learning from past in the aircraft maintenance industry: An empirical evaluation in the safety management framework.

The growth of commercial air transport arguably translates into more aging passenger aircraft queuing up for major maintenance, modifications, and/or freighter conversion with the aircraft maintenance industry. In the competitive business environment, this increased maintenance demand possesses the potential to stress the industry and make safety vulnerable. In the aircraft maintenance industry, several aircraft accidents and incidents have resulted from organizational failure to learn from the past. To address this chronic problem, this study aims to (a) establish a learning process model for the aircraft maintenance industry, (b) identify the factors that influence learning, and (c) determine the effect of identified factors on learning from the past. A review of scholarly articles and regulatory publications enabled the development of learning from the past process model and a data collection tool, followed by structural equation modeling to quantify the relationship among influencing factors. The study was conducted in the Indian aircraft maintenance environment and is based on the perspective of the front-line maintenance staff. The study found that safety communication is the decisive stage for learning from the past. Contextualization of the safety information and evaluating the lessons learned during safety communication strongly impact learning from the past, for which existing regulatory provisions are vulnerable. The findings of this study are meant to assist State regulators and management of the aircraft maintenance industry; nevertheless, safety managers and practitioners in other ultra-safe, high-risk sectors may also apply the results in compliance with the respective regulatory guidelines.

Stabilization of Lithium Transition Metal Silicates in the Olivine Structure.

While olivine LiFePO4 shows amongst the best electrochemical properties of Li-ion positive electrodes with respect to rate behavior owing to facile Li+ migration pathways in the framework, replacing the [PO4]3- polyanion with a silicate [SiO4]4- moiety in olivine is desirable. This could allow additional alkali content and hence electron transfer, and increase the capacity. Herein we explore the possibility of a strategy toward new cathode materials and demonstrate the first stabilization of a lithium transition metal silicate (as a pure silicate) in the olivine structure type. Using LiInSiO4 and LiScSiO4 as the parent materials, transition metal (Mn, Fe, Co) substitutions on the In/Sc site were investigated by computational modeling via atomic scale simulation. Transition metal substitution was found to be only favorable for Co, a finding confirmed by the successful solid state synthesis of olivine LixInyCo2-x-ySiO4. Stabilization of the structure was achieved by entropy provided by cation disorder.

Toxicity of a novel herbomineral preparation las01 on human cancer cell lines and its safety profile in humans and animals.

Polyhedral formulations based on Rasayana therapy described in Charaka Samhita showed remarkable improvement in quality of life of various cancer patients who have been found to be refractory or poor responders to modern chemotherapy and radiation treatment. One of the most recent novel herbomineral preparation, Las01 prepared absolutely as per the instruction given in the ancient Ayurvedic literature has been found to be effective as a potent anticancer drug in the human cell lines, the MCF-7 and Hela cancer cell lines. This novel preparation of Las01 is also found to be devoid of toxicity both in animals as well as in human subjects, which is the main drawback of chemotherapeutic agents used in modern system of medicine. Our results warrant multicentric clinical trials on a large scale which seems to be a future promising drug to cure incurables cancer patients.