90,175 research outputs found
Railway Reform in China.
The purpose of this working paper is to consider the current situation of Chinese Railways, the progress of reforms to date, and possible future developments. The first section describes the current problems of Chinese Railways, as a vast organisation subject to strong central control, facing enormous and rapidly growing demands which it is unable to satisfy. The progress of reform in Chinese Railways to date, and in particular the Economic Contract Responsibility System instituted in the late 1980's and the development of joint venture companies to build new lines, are then described. In the following section the key reform models found in other countries - deregulation and privatisation of vertically integrated regional companies; separation of infrastructure from operations with open access andlor franchising competitors; or reorganisation on the basis of business sectors - are then described. None is fully suitable for China, but it is suggested that a combination of sectorisation, more commercial independence, further development of joint public/private partnerships and more contracting out, is the most likely way forward
Information Society, Work and the Generation of New Forms of Social Exclusion (SOWING): National Report (Portugal)
The choice over the Portuguese case studies was based on the sample constructed for the application of the firm questionnaires, during the second year of the SOWING project, 1999. This sample was fulfilled of firms among several activity sectors: textile, manufacturing, electronics, transports and software industry, based on NACE – codes (2 – digit level). Thus, we agreed to include in a new database the remaining questionnaires and construct a sample with 113 observations. Concerning the organisational change we make a distinction of three categories of change. First we analyse changes taking place at the inter-firm level (outsourcing, subcontracting, geographic relocation), followed by changes at the organisational level (deconcentration/decentralisation, reduction of hierarchical levels, introduction of cost and profit centres). The third kind of changes analysed will be those taking place at the workplace level (job enlargement/enrichment, changing character of work, work load). The Portuguese studied companies presents a relative uniform pattern considering the variables social competencies, practical knowledge, responsibility and specialized professional qualifications.industry; information technologies; qualification; organisation; work
iTeleScope: Intelligent Video Telemetry and Classification in Real-Time using Software Defined Networking
Video continues to dominate network traffic, yet operators today have poor
visibility into the number, duration, and resolutions of the video streams
traversing their domain. Current approaches are inaccurate, expensive, or
unscalable, as they rely on statistical sampling, middle-box hardware, or
packet inspection software. We present {\em iTelescope}, the first intelligent,
inexpensive, and scalable SDN-based solution for identifying and classifying
video flows in real-time. Our solution is novel in combining dynamic flow rules
with telemetry and machine learning, and is built on commodity OpenFlow
switches and open-source software. We develop a fully functional system, train
it in the lab using multiple machine learning algorithms, and validate its
performance to show over 95\% accuracy in identifying and classifying video
streams from many providers including Youtube and Netflix. Lastly, we conduct
tests to demonstrate its scalability to tens of thousands of concurrent
streams, and deploy it live on a campus network serving several hundred real
users. Our system gives unprecedented fine-grained real-time visibility of
video streaming performance to operators of enterprise and carrier networks at
very low cost.Comment: 12 pages, 16 figure
Spatial variations in road collision propensities in London
Propensity to be involved in a road traffic collision in Greater London is likely to depend on
many factors, including personal mobility, lifestyle, behaviour, neighbourhood characteristics
and environment. This paper seeks to identify in terms of geodemographic type the propensity
of individuals to be involved in collisions and to examine geographic variations in such
propensities with distance from Central London. Results for Central London suggest only a
small number of Mosaic types portray a higher than average index score (over 100),
translating into a higher risk for a smaller proportion of London’s geodemographic types.
This contrasts with results which show a larger number of Mosaic classifications having
higher than average index scores further from Central London. The results highlight a need,
through enhanced spatial analysis, for better understanding of the spatially incidence of
collisions which are putting at risk the lives of London residents
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