AWARENESS AND ADOPTION OF INTELLIGENT RAILWAY TRANSPORT SYSTEM IN ZIMBABWE

The study seeks to investigate the awareness and adoption of modern technologies which are collectively called (IRTS) Intelligent Railway Transport Systems by the NRZ (National railways of Zimbabwe) of Zimbabwe. Adoption of these technologies are on an increasing trend in developed and developing countries, installation and implementation of a railway system called RailTracker in Tanzania has improved railway services in that country, in Uganda and Kenya the Rift Valley Railway (RVR) has introduced GPS technology to track trains. In India a system is used to detect defects in rolling stock while they are on the run. Where these systems have been implemented, they have significantly improved the efficiency, safety and quality of service of railway operations. In Zimbabwe the rail network is an important transport infrastructure enabling movement of goods and passengers. Primary research was carried out using questionnaires and semi structured interviews, data was collected from 67 participants comprising Engineers, Technicians, Train Drivers and Station Managers. 98% of the technical participants indicated that they were aware of IRTS however the adoption of the systems by the NRZ is at 0%. 100% of the Managers indicated that they were aware of IRTS and the company is willing to adopt them but currently no system has been installed Secondary research was conducted to identify and study similar projects elsewhere, their success as well as the difficulties encountered during their implementation. Secondary data was collected from books and the Internet. Article visualizations

Iterative Random Forests to detect predictive and stable high-order interactions

Genomics has revolutionized biology, enabling the interrogation of whole transcriptomes, genome-wide binding sites for proteins, and many other molecular processes. However, individual genomic assays measure elements that interact in vivo as components of larger molecular machines. Understanding how these high-order interactions drive gene expression presents a substantial statistical challenge. Building on Random Forests (RF), Random Intersection Trees (RITs), and through extensive, biologically inspired simulations, we developed the iterative Random Forest algorithm (iRF). iRF trains a feature-weighted ensemble of decision trees to detect stable, high-order interactions with same order of computational cost as RF. We demonstrate the utility of iRF for high-order interaction discovery in two prediction problems: enhancer activity in the early Drosophila embryo and alternative splicing of primary transcripts in human derived cell lines. In Drosophila, among the 20 pairwise transcription factor interactions iRF identifies as stable (returned in more than half of bootstrap replicates), 80% have been previously reported as physical interactions. Moreover, novel third-order interactions, e.g. between Zelda (Zld), Giant (Gt), and Twist (Twi), suggest high-order relationships that are candidates for follow-up experiments. In human-derived cells, iRF re-discovered a central role of H3K36me3 in chromatin-mediated splicing regulation, and identified novel 5th and 6th order interactions, indicative of multi-valent nucleosomes with specific roles in splicing regulation. By decoupling the order of interactions from the computational cost of identification, iRF opens new avenues of inquiry into the molecular mechanisms underlying genome biology

Paths to Innovation in Supply Chains: The Landscape of Future Research

This chapter presents a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda for supply chain and it is the result of an intensive work jointly performed involving a wide network of stakeholders from discrete manufacturing, process industry and logistics sector to put forward a vision to strengthen European Supply Chains for the next decade. The work is based on matching visions from literature and from experts with several iterations between desk research and workshops, focus groups and interviews. The result is a detailed analysis of the supply chain strategies identified as most relevant for the next years and definition of the related research and innovation topics as future developments and steps for the full implementation of the strategies, thus proposing innovative and cutting-edge actions to be implemented based on technological development and organisational change

Techniques for combining fast local decoders with global decoders under circuit-level noise

Implementing algorithms on a fault-tolerant quantum computer will require fast decoding throughput and latency times to prevent an exponential increase in buffer times between the applications of gates. In this work we begin by quantifying these requirements. We then introduce the construction of local neural network (NN) decoders using three-dimensional convolutions. These local decoders are adapted to circuit-level noise and can be applied to surface code volumes of arbitrary size. Their application removes errors arising from a certain number of faults, which serves to substantially reduce the syndrome density. Remaining errors can then be corrected by a global decoder, such as Blossom or Union Find, with their implementation significantly accelerated due to the reduced syndrome density. However, in the circuit-level setting, the corrections applied by the local decoder introduce many vertical pairs of highlighted vertices. To obtain a low syndrome density in the presence of vertical pairs, we consider a strategy of performing a syndrome collapse which removes many vertical pairs and reduces the size of the decoding graph used by the global decoder. We also consider a strategy of performing a vertical cleanup, which consists of removing all local vertical pairs prior to implementing the global decoder. Lastly, we estimate the cost of implementing our local decoders on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs).Comment: 28 pages, 24 figures. Comments welcome! V2 Contains a more detailed FPGA analysi

Annual reports of the town of Washington, New Hampshire for the year 2015.

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire

Design and evaluation of an integrated change lifecycle model to explore multiple dimensions of successful information technology enabled public services initiatives

Investing in information technology (IT) to enable change in organizations is an abundantly researched subject. Academic literature and practitioner publications have emphasized critical success factors and reasons for failure in change initiatives. Recent studies in the private sector highlight major challenges with these undertakings that diminish shareholder value. There is also mounting evidence that government agencies have had similar experiences, resulting in the loss of public trust and confidence. Many prior investigations have recommended improvements to one aspect of change, such as project management diligence or overcoming organizational resistance to change. Other investigations contend that success is inhibited by inadequate understanding of the multi-dimensional nature of change and by the application of prescriptive models that are incomplete. In response to these shortcomings, this thesis iteratively designs and develops a theoretical model that integrates multiple dimensions, which originate as the process, content, and context of change. The resulting model offers an extensive set of factors, conditions, and practices within all three dimensions that should be considered during the lifecycle of IT-enabled change. The thesis evaluates this integrated change lifecycle model (ICLM) empirically by exploring how two public sector organizations have managed the contribution of IT to produce positive results and benefits. Empirical evaluation of the ICLM focuses on the question, “How are successful IT-enabled public services change initiatives governed, managed, and performed?” The evaluation uses two cases: (1) a new service delivery channel initiative, and (2) an operational process improvement initiative. Both are located in a transportation program area of a U.S. state government. Thematic analysis of multi-faceted stakeholder interviews, survey results, and change initiative documentation was employed to determine findings for each change dimension and each change lifecycle stage. This multi-dimensional ICLM contributes to the theoretical body of knowledge in the fields of (1) public services management; (2) organizational change and development; and (3) information systems and technology. The ICLM offers an extensive elaboration of solution content domains, project performance processes, and organizational change environment aspects across five lifecycle stages: (1) public policy and strategy formulation; (2) public service improvement definition; (3) change solution delivery; (4) project results determination; and (5) public benefits realization. The methodology employed to produce and evaluate the ICLM corresponds to the design science research (DSR) paradigm and is consistent with DSR guidelines for contributing to research knowledge. The objective of the research is to develop a technology-oriented solution to an important and relevant management and organizational problem. The research has produced, via multiple iterations, an advanced artifact in the form of the ICLM. The viability and utility of the ICLM has been evaluated and rigorously demonstrated via two in-depth case studies. The ICLM, and its evaluation findings and implications have been presented to technology-oriented and management-oriented academics and practitioners in research colloquia, conferences, and leadership sessions. Participating program and system managers accept that the multi-dimensional ICLM could benefit their agency in two ways: (1) as a diagnostic tool to assess existing change initiatives; and (2) as a strategic tool to plan and organize new initiatives. Of particular interest is the finding that no individual manager was tasked to orchestrate solutions to meet the requirements of all change dimensions. Instead, each initiative organization employed a collaborative approach with well-defined accountabilities for each change dimension. The ICLM could help system owners to understand the complex responsibilities of the information system integrator role to ensure fit for purpose and integrative compatibility of technical components from all sources. The ICLM also defines a public services integrator role for government change initiatives to ensure that the IT components fit with redesigned laws, rules, regulations, policies, processes, preferred practices, and duties. The findings confirm the value to management practice and theory of a unifying model that integrates the three change dimensions within a prescribed change lifecycle. Based on these results, it is recommended that the ICLM be evaluated in other public sector program areas as well as in private sector business environments to further its contribution to management, organizational change, and information systems theory, and to increase its value to researchers and practitioners

High-speed Train Control System Big Data Analysis Based on the Fuzzy RDF model and Uncertain Reasoning

China high-speed train control system is a combination of computer, communication and control. Its events are diverse, including sensor data stream, GPS signal, GSM-R transmission data, real-time video monitoring data, train control software data, etc. These data have the typical characteristics of big data. If these data are well applied, this will be of great help to operations, maintenance, safety, passenger services, etc. This paper presents an efficient analysis method based on the fuzzy RDF model and uncertain reasoning for high-speed train control system big data. We have used the method proposed in this paper to analyze the data of the high-speed train control system. The experiment results show that the method proposed in this paper has good efficiency and scalability for the analysis of big data with different structures, types and context sensitive from high-speed train control system