Optimal Scheduling of Trains on a Single Line Track

This paper describes the development and use of a model designed to optimise train schedules on single line rail corridors. The model has been developed with two major applications in mind, namely: as a decision support tool for train dispatchers to schedule trains in real time in an optimal way; and as a planning tool to evaluate the impact of timetable changes, as well as railroad infrastructure changes. The mathematical programming model described here schedules trains over a single line track. The priority of each train in a conflict depends on an estimate of the remaining crossing and overtaking delay, as well as the current delay. This priority is used in a branch and bound procedure to allow and optimal solution to reasonable size train scheduling problems to be determined efficiently. The use of the model in an application to a 'real life' problem is discussed. The impacts of changing demand by increasing the number of trains, and reducing the number of sidings for a 150 kilometre section of single line track are discussed. It is concluded that the model is able to produce useful results in terms of optimal schedules in a reasonable time for the test applications shown here

News Talks: Critical Service-Learning for Social Change

We detail the process and results of one campus community partnership in Greensboro, North Carolina that began with the free delivery of the local daily newspaper to low-income residents as a way to encourage civic deliberation and action. Here, we first provide the context for our study by reviewing the often under-utilized critical approach to service-learning programs on college campuses before detailing how newspapers and political action in America offer an impetus for social change. We then describe our specific research project’s philosophical grounding in dialogue and feminist ethics, which emphasize the importance of stories in establishing and maintaining communities. After this contextual discussion we describe our research program’s mixed methods and findings before concluding with lessons learned to bolster community engagement

Communication as critical inquiry in service-learning

Service-learning courses offer the opportunity for students to make sense of the social world by recognizing its political and ethical dimensions through practical engagement in community problems. This paper presents pedagogical resources to inspire students in service-learning courses to experience: 1) dialogue inside and outside the class, 2) critical inquiry into a social issue, and, 3) surprises that invite students to activate civic responsibility. The interplay of dialogue, critical inquiry, and surprises presents the opportunity for students to experience how they can shape and redefine their roles in society, and as importantly, how society can change as a result of their involvement

Race and Reconciliation: Redressing Wounds of Injustice [book review]

A review of the book “Race and Reconciliation: Redressing Wounds of Injustice” by John B. Hatch

Speaking at the bedrock of ethics

In a moment familiar to many of us, one of the authors of this piece attended a philosophical meeting on the topic of Emmanuel Levinas. "So, you are in communication studies," said a philosopher during a break. "Why would a speech person be interested in Levinas?" This paper probes the place of speech in Levinasian ethics. We hope to show that when philosopher Emmanuel Levinas rested his compelling life project on ethics, he said something new about the act of speaking itself. First, for Levinas, speaking begins with the imperative issued by the presence or face of the other. He calls that issuance the saying. Antecedent to words, the saying is the commitment of an approach to the other, the move to response, the signifying of signification. Second, the saying moves into language where it is subordinated to the said. It is in the coordination of the saying and the said that ethics shows itself or is betrayed. Although the saying is perhaps overwhelmed by the said, it remains present even in absence. Third, for Levinas we can sense the ineffable, yet present, call to responsibility in the trace. The trace, and here Levinas brings God to mind, reveals the saying, and is communicated in the face.((1)) The face, the saying, and the trace are where the Levinasian responsibility of the one for the other takes form. They are the home of ethics.((2)

Barrack Obama's Call to Restore Ethics in Politics

How do we bring ethics into the world of politics? Presidential hopeful Barack Obama told us how in his primary season speech, “A More Perfect Union.” Obama offered messages of hope, care and compassion as he communicated about the suffering in our country. He detailed how people and leaders can ethically interact about political matters if we keep our focus there. Obama spoke in a prophetic style, rooted in the Hebrew scripture, and rallied Americans around common values

Difficult conversations as moral imperative: Negotiating ethnic identities during war

I found the claim of a "moral imperative" as reason to bomb Kosovo and the sovereign nation of Yugoslavia to be untenable because as an American of Serbian descent, I saw the media portrayal of my relatives, culture, and ancestry reduced to descriptions of savagery and barbarism. Thus began my autoethnographic exploration of ethics and communication in the emotional work of identity construction within a context of war. In this essay, I use my personal experiences with conflicted identities as the basis for discovering a discussion strategy for difficult conversations that is capable of helping us understand the connections between personal actions and political solutions, lived experiences and the new terms for global dialogue

Ethics in the City: How Talk about Ethics Leads to an Ethical Culture

A study by Spoma Jovanovic (University of North Carolina, Greensboro) and Roy Wood (University of Denver) set out to explore communication about ethics to see if there are ways of talking that do make a difference and to explore how an ethics initiative might work to create an ethical culture in government. For almost five years the team studied the ethics initiative in Denver, Colorado. During that period, they observed hundred of hours of meetings, conducted formal and informal interviews, executed surveys and focus groups, and reviewed public records all courtesy of the Colorado Open Records Act

Communication ethics and ethical culture: A study of the ethics initiative in Denver City Government

This article examines the work of the ethics initiative in the City of Denver to see how talk about ethics contributes to an ethical culture. By paying particular attention to the communication in the city's Code of Ethics, ethics training discussion, employee interviews, and formal documents relaying the Board of Ethics' views, we show how ethics emerges within communication. We argue that the emergent quality of ethics is dialogically refined in communication. For practitioners and officials interested in advancing organization-wide ethics training, we urge pursuing dialogical means so that people can negotiate among competing interests to shape future policy and action reflective of their ethical concerns

Who‘s Afraid of Politics? On the Need to Teach Political Engagement

There is a crisis in the political body today and we, as professors at institutions of higher education, share responsibility for it. The crisis of which we speak is widespread cynicism, inaction, and disengagement from the political realm and from political processes. While bemoaning students‘ political apathy, individualism, and obedience in the name of grades, we rarely ask about our role in this state of affairs. Dare we admit that students have learned all too well what we have taught them, even if we have taught it unintentionally through our own aloofness and disengagement? It is clear that most of us have given up on venturing into political territory, for many reasons. We have to recognize that in doing so we feed the machine of disengagement. We are in part to blame, but we are not the only ones. Primary and secondary schoolteachers are our partners in this apathy-mongering. Chris Wilkins, a researcher in Britain, found that future teachers had their own deflated political views: they consider politics irrelevant to their daily lives and inaccessible even if they want to participate (1999)