Situational questions

The chief s interview may also include situational questions like those typically asked by an oral board, or you may be facing an oral board in addition to your interview with the chief. 

Situational questions might be more difficult to anticipate and to answer than general or personal questions, but the answering process and the principles of presentation and honesty still apply. It is a good idea to prepare for this type of question in case you are asked one like the following You are alone in a private house with another firefighter. You see him take a wristwatch... 

Another area where we may see novelty affecting confidence is where evidence is used in a novel manner. In this situation questions can arise about the relevance of the evidence. For example, there may be concerns about the use of historical evidence taken from a different or non-safety critical domain. At a basic level we have some understanding about concepts of relevance, trustworthiness and independence of evidence (Weaver 2003). We know that relevance can be affected by the directness or coverage of the evidence we know that conceptual independence is nwre convincing than mechanistic independence and we know that trustworthiness of evidence can be affected by a number of factors, including ... 

Defining the vision, mission and general principle of a company is helpful before starting to assess the company s situation. Questions which need to be asked involve the key principles and core values of the company. The identity of a company derives from its mission statement and its core principles. Furthermore it is important to define the fields of activity as well as the strategic objectives of your company. Besides defining its identity, this will help to assess the future direction of the company within supply chain management. 

Analytical models using classical reservoir engineering techniques such as material balance, aquifer modelling and displacement calculations can be used in combination with field and laboratory data to estimate recovery factors for specific situations. These methods are most applicable when there is limited data, time and resources, and would be sufficient for most exploration and early appraisal decisions. However, when the development planning stage is reached, it is becoming common practice to build a reservoir simulation model, which allows more sensitivities to be considered in a shorter time frame. The typical sorts of questions addressed by reservoir simulations are listed in Section 8.5. 

Most of the situations encountered in capillarity involve figures of revolution, and for these it is possible to write down explicit expressions for and R2 by choosing plane 1 so that it passes through the axis of revolution. As shown in Fig. II-7n, R then swings in the plane of the paper, i.e., it is the curvature of the profile at the point in question. R is therefore given simply by the expression from analytical geometry for the curvature of a line... 

The next question asked is whether there are any indications, from ab initio calculations, to the fact that the non-adiabatic transfonnation angles have this feature. Indeed such a study, related to the H3 system, was reported a few years ago [64]. However, it was done for circular contours with exceptionally small radii (at most a few tenths of an atomic unit). Similar studies, for circular and noncircular contours of much larger radii (sometimes up to five atomic units and more) were done for several systems showing that this feature holds for much more general situations [11,12,74]. As a result of the numerous numerical studies on this subject [11,12,64-75] the quantization of a quasi-isolated two-state non-adiabatic coupling term can be considered as established for realistic systems. 

As we have seen, the sub-Hilbert spaces are defined for the whole configuration space and this requirement could lead, in certain cases, to situations where it will be necessary to include the complete Hilbert space. However, it frequently happens that the dynamics we intend to study takes place in a given, isolated, region that contains only part of the conical intersection points and the question is whether the effects of the other conical intersections can be ignored ... 

The emphasis in our previous studies was on isolated two-state conical intersections. Here, we would like to refer to cases where at a given point three (or more) states become degenerate. This can happen, for example, when two (line) seams cross each other at a point so that at this point we have three surfaces crossing each other. The question is How do we incorporate this situation into our theoretical framework ... 

The generalized standard addition method (GSAM) extends the analysis of mixtures to situations in which matrix effects prevent the determination of 8x and 8y using external standards.When adding a known concentration of analyte to a solution containing an unknown concentration of analyte, the concentrations usually are not additive (see question 9 in Chapter 5). Conservation of mass, however, is always obeyed. Equation 10.11 can be written in terms of moles, n, by using the relationship... 

What-If Analysis. The what-if analysis is simply a brainstorming technique that asks a variety of questions related to situations that can occur. For instance, in regards to a pump, the question What if the pump stops mnning might be asked. An analysis of this situation then follows. The answer should provide a description of the resulting consequence. Recommendations then foUow, if required, on the measures taken to prevent an accident. 

Both prototypal questions related illustrate the need for a successhil technical service professional to have a strong understanding of the customer s apphcations and processes, within proper intellectual property considerations. This need for a thorough understanding is not always straightforward. A common example of the complications that can arise is provided from the paint (qv) industry (11). If, for instance, a calcium carbonate suppHer would like a paint manufacturer to use their material versus a competitive one, the onus is on the suppHer to show that the material can be successfully used in the paint formula of interest. However, many such formulas are held as proprietary. The technical service professional therefore does not know the components of the paint. This would lead to an unworkable situation from an evaluation standpoint save for the fact that the paint company may supply a miHbase or other intermediate form of the paint to allow a proper comparison of carbonates to be carried out. Thus mutual benefits can result and no loss of proprietary information occur. 

In this situation, management would inquire whether the product has been improved by increased tensile strength. To answer this question, in addition to a variety of analogous questions, it is necessary to have some type of scientific basis upon which to draw a conclusion. 

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