A model to distribute mark-up amongst quotation component item

The outline of a proposed new unbalanced bidding model is discussed. Background is provided as regards the role of item price loading, otherwise known as unbalanced bidding. Three types of loading are described, namely those of ‘front-end loading’, ‘back-end loading’ and ‘quantity error exploitation’ (otherwise known as ‘individual rate loading’). It is proposed that one single mathematical model could embrace all three of the above types and that the aspect of risk may be addressed partially by means of using the quadratic programming techniques employed within the field of Modern Portfolio Theory. MPT is a field pioneered by Markowitz in 1959 and was developed to identify optimum portfolios of investments, typically equities. It is hypothesized that MPT presents a basis by which to distinguish Efficient Item Pricing combinations from inefficient ones and thereby provide a scientific tool by which rational contractors may optimally price a project’s items. A brief history of unbalanced bidding describes the field that was pioneered in the 1960’s by Marvin Gates and Robert Stark, as well as the subsequent contributions by the leading researchers in the field.unbalanced bidding, bidding models, item price loading, modern portfolio theory, construction industry, mathematical models, bidding strategies

Detained patients and the right to refuse treatment

R (Wilkinson) v. Broadmoor RMO (1) Mental Health Act Commission (2) Secretary of State for Health (Interested party) [2001] EWCA Civ 1545Court of Appeal (22nd October 2001) Simon Brown LJ, Brooke LJ and Hale LJA detained patient’s right to refuse treatment to which he or she objects has been greatly strengthened by a recent decision of the Court of Appeal, applying the provisions of the Human Rights Act 1998, although in reaching its decision the Court of Appeal has posed as many questions for the future of the law in this area as it has answered

Reform of the Mental Health Act 1983 – Convention Implications of the Green Paper

Assessing the Convention compatibility of the Government proposals for reform of the Mental Health Act 1983 set out in the Green Paper1 is largely an exercise in speculation, for three reasons.First, the proposals are very broad; the detail, where the devil may be found, is yet to come.Second, the Convention does not permit the Strasbourg authorities to review the legality of national legislation in the abstract, but only with reference to particular cases after the proceedings are complete2. Although that will not necessarily preclude a domestic court from reviewing the lawfulness of any provision of the new Mental Health Act after incorporation of the Human Rights Act 19983, the comments that can be made in this article are necessarily confined to thegeneral rather than the specific.Third, and perhaps most significantly, it is impossible to predict the impact of the Convention following the coming into force of the Human Rights Act 1998 on 2 October 2000

Is this a revolution? The impact of the Human Rights Act on Mental Health Law

In ‘Almost a Revolution: Mental Health Law and the Limits of Change’, Prof. Paul Applebaum, writing in 1994, describes a period of tumultuous change in the United States during the late 1960s in civil rights and mental health law and which lasted nearly three decades. At the end of that period, he concluded, there had been little real and substantial change to mental health law in the United States. This article looks at some of the changes to mental health law that have already been wrought in England & Wales by the Human Rights Act 1998 and briefly considers its potential for creating real and substantial change in the longer term

Kinetics and Mechanism of Metal Nanoparticle Growth via Optical Extinction Spectroscopy and Computational Modeling: The Curious Case of Colloidal Gold

An overarching computational framework unifying several optical theories to describe the temporal evolution of gold nanoparticles (GNPs) during a seeded growth process is presented. To achieve this, we used the inexpensive and widely available optical extinction spectroscopy, to obtain quantitative kinetic data. In situ spectra collected over a wide set of experimental conditions were regressed using the physical model, calculating light extinction by ensembles of GNPs during the growth process. This model provides temporal information on the size, shape, and concentration of the particles and any electromagnetic interactions between them. Consequently, we were able to describe the mechanism of GNP growth and divide the process into distinct genesis periods. We provide explanations for several longstanding mysteries, for example, the phenomena responsible for the purple-greyish hue during the early stages of GNP growth, the complex interactions between nucleation, growth, and aggregation events, and a clear distinction between agglomeration and electromagnetic interactions. The presented theoretical formalism has been developed in a generic fashion so that it can readily be adapted to other nanoparticulate formation scenarios such as the genesis of various metal nanoparticles.Comment: Main text and supplementary information (accompanying MATLAB codes available on the journal webpage

The Relation between Approximation in Distribution and Shadowing in Molecular Dynamics

Molecular dynamics refers to the computer simulation of a material at the atomic level. An open problem in numerical analysis is to explain the apparent reliability of molecular dynamics simulations. The difficulty is that individual trajectories computed in molecular dynamics are accurate for only short time intervals, whereas apparently reliable information can be extracted from very long-time simulations. It has been conjectured that long molecular dynamics trajectories have low-dimensional statistical features that accurately approximate those of the original system. Another conjecture is that numerical trajectories satisfy the shadowing property: that they are close over long time intervals to exact trajectories but with different initial conditions. We prove that these two views are actually equivalent to each other, after we suitably modify the concept of shadowing. A key ingredient of our result is a general theorem that allows us to take random elements of a metric space that are close in distribution and embed them in the same probability space so that they are close in a strong sense. This result is similar to the Strassen-Dudley Theorem except that a mapping is provided between the two random elements. Our results on shadowing are motivated by molecular dynamics but apply to the approximation of any dynamical system when initial conditions are selected according to a probability measure.Comment: 21 pages, final version accepted in SIAM Dyn Sy

Constructing the Cool Wall: A Tool to Explore Teen Meanings of Cool

This paper describes the development and exploration of a tool designed to assist in investigating ‘cool’ as it applies to the design of interactive products for teenagers. The method involved the derivation of theoretical understandings of cool from literature that resulted in identification of seven core categories for cool, which were mapped to a hierarchy. The hierarchy includes having of cool things, the doing of cool activities and the being of cool. This paper focuses on a tool, the Cool Wall, developed to explore one specific facet of the hierarchy; exploring shared understanding of having cool things. The paper describes the development and construction of the tool, using a heavily participatory approach, and the results and analysis of a study carried out over 2 days in a school in the UK. The results of the study both provide clear insights into cool things and enable a refined understanding of cool in this context. Two additional studies are then used to identify potential shortcomings in the Cool Wall methodology. In the first study participants were able to populate a paper cool wall with anything they chose, this revealed two potential new categories of images and that the current set of images covered the majority of key themes. In the second study teenagers interpretations of the meaning of the images included in the Cool Wall were explored, this showed that the majority of meanings were as expected and a small number of unexpected interpretations provided some valuable insights

The Cicadellidae of Kansas

A dissertation submitted to the Department of Entomology and to the graduate faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosoph

Characteristics of Sediment Transport in Overwash Surges

Sediment samples taken from a washover deposit were used to determine the mode of sediment transport within overwash surges. The determination of sediment transport mode is based on the concept of hydraulic equivalency of different density grains. Hydraulic equivalency may be based on settling velocities or entrainment velocities. Two individual mineral grains of different densities cannot have the same settling and entrainment velocities. If the settling velocities of each grain are similar, then the less dense grain must be physically larger to settle at the same rate as the smaller denser mineral. However, once both of these grains have made bed contact, the larger surface area of the lighter mineral protrudes further into the water column and is more susceptible to transport than the smaller, denser grain. Similar settling velocities of different density minerals indicate deposition out of suspension. Different settling velocities indicate transport involving some form of bed contact. This study, conducted on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, involved the settling velocities of magnetite, garnet and quartz minerals separated from the same sample to determine principal mode of transport. Results indicated that 16 percent of the samples analyzed were the result of transport by suspension, while the remaining 84 percent of the samples were transported with bed contact of varying intensity. Magnetite consistently showed the slowest settling rates, followed by garnet and quartz minerals, The study further indicated that magnetite was the most difficult to entrain due to its high density, spherical shape and the larger relative size of the bed material