Army Supplies in the Forward Area and the Tumpline System: A First World War Canadian Logistical Innovation

Editor’s Note: In British Logistics on the Western Front, 1914–1919 (Praeger, 1998), Ian M. Brown documents the problems of maintaining an army in the field; throughout that war, supply lines were strained to get food, equipment and ammunition forward. Early problems of adequate supplies were replaced by an inability to get the items from depots to where they were required. Some of these latter problems were blamed on “establishments” and other force-structure problems caused by stripping logistical-support units to meet the manpower needs of the fighting units. The decision to dramatically reduce the size of the BEF divisions in France helped reduced pressures. By stripping a battalion out of each brigade, and using the men freed as replacements, the BEF maintained its paper strength in divisions (though, in fact, the strength went considerably down) and, more importantly, also reduced its overall logistical requirements. But, as Brown writes: The Canadian Corps successfully resisted this “downsizing” as its commander opposed the reduction vehemently. In fact, he managed to increase the effective size and strength of his divisions by using the manpower from the two [sic] Canadian divisions forming in Britain. This gave Haig a single very strong corps—four overstrength divisions amounting to some one hundred thousand men (forty-eight thousand infantry)—but it also gave his administration a supply problem, since the standard divisional pack could not supply a Canadian division. In spite of this trouble, it did not appear to cause great difficulty on the lines of communication. Indeed, it gets no mention in either the QMG’s or AG’s diaries.... (pp.165-166) Buried in this passage lay two secrets. The four-battalion brigades perhaps (too simply?) explain the use of the Canadian Corps as Haig’s “shock troops.” But as Brown notes, how the Canadians maintained these larger formations is not clear from British sources (p. 177). The answer to this secret must be sought elswhere. One answer in F.R. Phelan’s “tumpline.

Fundamental time asymmetry from nontrivial space topology

It is argued that a fundamental time asymmetry could arise from the global structure of the space manifold. The proposed mechanism relies on the CPT anomaly of certain chiral gauge theories defined over a multiply connected space manifold. The resulting time asymmetry (microscopic arrow of time) is illustrated by a simple thought experiment. The effect could, in principle, play a role in determining the initial conditions of the big bang.Comment: 9 pages, REVTeX, v5: version publishe

An Economic Interpretation of the Compensation Mechanism in the RAINS Model.

In 1999 the optimization mode of the Regional Air Pollution Information and Simulation (RAINS) model was used to support international environmental negotiations on the Protocol to Abate Acidification, Eutrophication and Ground-level Ozone of the UN/ECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution and on the Directive for National Emission Ceilings of the Commission of the European Union. The optimization determines the cost-minimal set of emission reductions that bring acid deposition below user-specified constraints. In the original formulation of the optimization problem in the RAINS model, such deposition constraints were specified for each of the 750 grid cells in Europe, for which acid deposition is calculated, and emissions had to be reduced in such a way that all constraints are fully met. During the course of the negotiations it was recognized that, using such a formulation, deposition targets for individual grid cells might impose undue emission control burdens, which might not always be fully supported by verified scientific data. As a consequence, a "compensation" mechanism was developed, which introduces a certain spatial flexibility to the achievement of the deposition targets while maintaining the overall level of environmental achievements. This paper provides an economic interpretation of the compensation mechanism.

Prospects for the agricultural sector in the Netherlands, Economic and technological explorations

The Dutch agricultural sector is greatly influenced by the global economy; the sector is very much focused on international trade. Every year, the agricultural sector generates an extensive positive export balance of over €20 billion (€23 billion in 2007). The proportion of agricultural products and food in total Dutch exports of goods and services is also fairly high (17%). A large proportion (around 70%) of the activities of the agro-complex is related to foreign sales, so there is heavy dependence on international trade

Seesaw neutrino masses and mixing with extended democracy

In the context of a minimal extension of the Standard Model with three extra heavy right-handed neutrinos, we propose a model for neutrino masses and mixing based on the hipothesis of a complete alignment of the lepton mass matrices in flavour space. Considering a uniform quasi-democratic structure for these matrices, we show that, in the presence of a highly hierarchical right-handed neutrino mass spectrum, the effective neutrino mass matrix, obtained through the seesaw mechanism, can reproduce all the solutions of the solar neutrino problem.Comment: Latex, 3pages. Uses espcrc2.sty. Talk given at the Europhysics Neutrino Oscillation Workshop - NOW 2000. To appear in Nucl. Phys. B, Proceedings Supplement

THE CASE AGAINST AN "AGRARIAN ANTITRUST POLICY"

Industrial Organization,

Broiler farm size in relation tot sustainability aspects

In the Netherlands the number of broiler farms has been reduced by 50%, while farm size doubled between 1990 and 2008. A debate on the positive and negative aspects of large farms emerge. Many entrepreneurs in the broiler sector use increase in scale as strategy to reduce production cost. However, a critical reflection on the process of scaling up is needed. We investigated various aspects of broiler farm size with three farm sizes: small (fewer than 60,000 birds), medium (60,000 to 120,000 birds) and large (more than 120,000 birds). . The study shows that: - profitability (revenues as % of total cost) is higher on larger farms - gross margin (revenues over feed and chick cost) is higher on larger farms - larger broiler farms have a higher labour productivity (kg broiler live weight / hour) - larger farms more often have certified low ammonia emission poultry houses - there is no clear relationship between mortality and broiler farm size - there is no significant relation between the level of medication (antibiotics) and farm size The size of a broiler house and the equipment used is not related to the farm size. As a result there is no influence of farm size on the physical and social environment of the broilers. Our conclusion is, that larger broiler farms have some clear economic advantages. There is no evidence that there is a negative relation between farm size and animal health and animal welfare

sPlot: a statistical tool to unfold data distributions

The paper advocates the use of a statistical tool dedicated to the exploration of data samples populated by several sources of events. This new technique, called sPlot, is able to unfold the contributions of the different sources to the distribution of a data sample in a given variable. The sPlot tool applies in the context of a Likelihood fit which is performed on the data sample to determine the yields of the various sources.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures, Accepted for publication in Nucl. Instr. Method

The investigation of fibre reinforcement effects in thermoplastic materials: interfacial bond strength and fibre end parameter

Glass fibres used in the manufacture of fibre reinforced thermoplastic composites (FRTP) are normally sized with a film former which includes a silane coupling agent to improve the interfacial bond strength between glass fibre and matrix . However, during composite failure even an optimized interface cannot stop the initia tion of cracks at the fibre ends, which can lead to large transverse cracks in the matrix or failure by fibre pull-out. In order to help better understand the failure mechanisms of FRTP, thermoplastic microbond tests and photoelasticity experiments have been used to study the interface in model single fibre composites