7,713 research outputs found
Systemic transformative adaptation towards urban economic resilience
The socioeconomic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic are likely to increase further across economies. There is increasing apprehension on the status of rail transport infrastructure megaprojects which are already complex and face many uncertainties and it is imperative to initiate a restoration coupled with support to be implemented in a timely manner. Investors continue to invest in rail megaprojects that run high risks of being over-scheduled and over-budgeted, which has raised the need to improve rail megaporjects and their investments in order to establish the economic base of any society. Hence it is vital to analyse the systemic risks in rail megaprojects given their complexity and uncertainty towards developing an efficient risk management framework. To improve the performance of the procurement of rail megaprojects, the present study conducts a detailed literature review to explore the key procurement risk indicators and critical success factors for public procurement of rail megaprojects. The key findings are used to develop an integrated approach towards a systemic transformative adaptation to enable the effective incorporation of the procurement risk management process into the planning and decision-making of rail megaprojects in the UK. This study develops a conceptual framework that indicates that one of the most critical enablers of improvement in the performance of procurement of rail megaprojects is by enabling a collaborative approach. This is a unique study that presents key procurement risk indicators and critical success factors to derive sustainability based enablers to improve the performance of the procurement process of rail megaprojects
Mount St. Helens aerosol evolution
Stratospheric aerosol samples were collected using a wire impactor during the year following the eruption of Mount St. Helens. Analysis of samples shows that aerosol volume increased for 6 months due to gas-to-particle conversion and then decreased to background levels in the following 6 months
Lunar and Solar Torques on the Oceanic Tides
A general framework for calculating lunar and solar torques on the oceanic tides is developed in terms of harmonic constituents. Axial torques and their associated angular momentum and earth-rotation variations are deduced from recent satellite-altimeter and satellite-tracking tide solutions. Torques on the prograde components of the tide produce the familiar secular braking of the rotation rate. The estimated secular acceleration is approximately -1300 sec/century(sup 2) (less 4% after including atmospheric tides); the implied rate of change in the length of day is 2.28 milliseconds/century. Torques on the retrograde components of the tide produce periodic rotation variations at twice the tidal frequency. Interaction torques, e.g. solar torques on lunar tides, generate a large suite of rotation-rate variations at sums and differences of the original tidal frequencies. These are estimated for periods from 18.6 years to quarter-diurnal. At subdaily periods the angular momentum variations are 5 to 6 orders of magnitude smaller than the variations caused by ocean tidal currents
Quantum Impurities and the Neutron Resonance Peak in : Ni versus Zn
The influence of magnetic (S=1) and nonmagnetic (S=0) impurities on the spin
dynamics of an optimally doped high temperature superconductor is compared in
two samples with almost identical superconducting transition temperatures:
YBa(CuNi)O (T=80 K) and
YBa(CuZn)O (T=78 K). In the Ni-substituted
system, the magnetic resonance peak (which is observed at E40 meV in
the pure system) shifts to lower energy with a preserved E/T ratio
while the shift is much smaller upon Zn substitution. By contrast Zn, but not
Ni, restores significant spin fluctuations around 40 meV in the normal state.
These observations are discussed in the light of models proposed for the
magnetic resonance peak.Comment: 3 figures, submitted to PR
Optimized Dynamical Decoupling for Time Dependent Hamiltonians
The validity of optimized dynamical decoupling (DD) is extended to
analytically time dependent Hamiltonians. As long as an expansion in time is
possible the time dependence of the initial Hamiltonian does not affect the
efficiency of optimized dynamical decoupling (UDD, Uhrig DD). This extension
provides the analytic basis for (i) applying UDD to effective Hamiltonians in
time dependent reference frames, for instance in the interaction picture of
fast modes and for (ii) its application in hierarchical
DD schemes with pulses about two perpendicular axes in spin space. to
suppress general decoherence, i.e., longitudinal relaxation and dephasing.Comment: 5 pages, no figure
A decidable policy language for history-based transaction monitoring
Online trading invariably involves dealings between strangers, so it is
important for one party to be able to judge objectively the trustworthiness of
the other. In such a setting, the decision to trust a user may sensibly be
based on that user's past behaviour. We introduce a specification language
based on linear temporal logic for expressing a policy for categorising the
behaviour patterns of a user depending on its transaction history. We also
present an algorithm for checking whether the transaction history obeys the
stated policy. To be useful in a real setting, such a language should allow one
to express realistic policies which may involve parameter quantification and
quantitative or statistical patterns. We introduce several extensions of linear
temporal logic to cater for such needs: a restricted form of universal and
existential quantification; arbitrary computable functions and relations in the
term language; and a "counting" quantifier for counting how many times a
formula holds in the past. We then show that model checking a transaction
history against a policy, which we call the history-based transaction
monitoring problem, is PSPACE-complete in the size of the policy formula and
the length of the history. The problem becomes decidable in polynomial time
when the policies are fixed. We also consider the problem of transaction
monitoring in the case where not all the parameters of actions are observable.
We formulate two such "partial observability" monitoring problems, and show
their decidability under certain restrictions
Resonant Spin Excitation in an Overdoped High Temperature Superconductor
An inelastic neutron scattering study of overdoped Bi_2Sr_2CaCu_2O_{8+\delta}
$ (T_c = 83 K) has revealed a resonant spin excitation in the superconducting
state. The mode energy is E_res=38 meV, significantly lower than in optimally
doped Bi_2Sr_2CaCu_2O_{8+\delta} (T_c = 91 K, E_ res =43 meV). This
observation, which indicates a constant ratio E_res /k_B T_c \sim 5.4, helps
resolve a long-standing controversy about the origin of the resonant spin
excitation in high-temperature superconductors.Comment: final version: PRL 86, 1610 (2001
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