The National Transport Data Framework

Report by Professor Peter Landshoff (Cambridge University) and Professor John Polak (Imperial College London) on a project for the Department for Transport. emails: [email protected] [email protected] NTDF is designed to be a resource for data owners to deposit descriptions into a central catalogue, so that people can search for data and find data and understand their characteristics. The value of this is to individuals, to commercial organizations, and to public bodies. For example, services that provide better information to travellers will help to make their journey less stressful and persuade them to make more use of public transport. Transport operators need very diverse information to help them plan developments to their services: demographic, geographical, economic etc. And policy makers need a similar range of information to help them decide how to divide their budget and afterwards to evaluate how valuable it has been.This work was supported by the Department for Transport (DfT)

International Liquidity and the Role of the SDR in the International Monetary System

This paper describes how the changed conditions in the international monetary system have undermined the role originally envisaged for the SDR. It argues that the concept of a global stock of international liquidity, which was fundamental to the creation of the SDR, is now no longer relevant. Nonetheless, there are good reasons to satisfy part of the growing demand for international reserves with SDR allocations: (i) there are efficiency gains, as SDRs can be created at zero resource cost, and thus obviate the need for countries to run current account surpluses or engage in expensive borrowing to obtain reserves, and (ii) there would be a reduction in systemic risk, as SDRs would substitute to some extent for borrowed reserves, which are a less reliable and predictable source of reserves, especially in times of crisis. Copyright 2004, International Monetary Fund

Residual life of external steel constructions

The contribution is focused to the aspects of prevention untimely damage of exterior steel constructions at variable climatic conditions. The aspects for assurance of continual service of strategic steel constructions (bridges, pipelines, pylons, pressure vessels, containers, frameworks, cranes, chimneys, towers, etc.) is by action of severe climatic conditions in our climatic zones deteriorative. The service safety of construction mentioned is decreasing and could cause preterm damages. To avoid preterm damage there are two ways. First is to create conditions excluding the damage and second is proposal of construction safety also after expected limit state. During the lifetime is needed to assure failure free service of external steel constructions stressed by variable loading. At the same time is needed to calculate with action of aggressiveness of external environment as well as worsen atmospheric conditions. From load and conditions analysis could be calculated the residual life of external steel constructions

Residual life of external steel constructions

The contribution is focused to the aspects of prevention untimely damage of exterior steel constructions at variable climatic conditions. The aspects for assurance of continual service of strategic steel constructions (bridges, pipelines, pylons, pressure vessels, containers, frameworks, cranes, chimneys, towers, etc.) is by action of severe climatic conditions in our climatic zones deteriorative. The service safety of construction mentioned is decreasing and could cause preterm damages. To avoid preterm damage there are two ways. First is to create conditions excluding the damage and second is proposal of construction safety also after expected limit state. During the lifetime is needed to assure failure free service of external steel constructions stressed by variable loading. At the same time is needed to calculate with action of aggressiveness of external environment as well as worsen atmospheric conditions. From load and conditions analysis could be calculated the residual life of external steel constructions

An Empirical Investigation of Antecedents of Internet Abuse in the Workplace

engage in Internet abuse, and whether any of 15 antecedents predict the amount of that abuse. Data were collected from 571 Usenet users in an on-line survey. Aggregating the time for each of the eleven listed methods of Internet abuse revealed a total of 5.8 hours per week, on average. Most of the antecedents in two of the three Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) categories (Attitudes and Subjective Norms), were significant, and none of the antecedents in the third TPB category (Perceived Behavioral Control) showed significance. addiction, self-justification, job satisfaction, peer culture, and supervisor culture were significant predictors of Internet abuse. Exploratory demographic factors computer experience, gender, and firm revenue also showed predictive power

The evolution of transcription-associated biases of mutations across vertebrates

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The interplay between transcription and mutational processes can lead to particular mutation patterns in transcribed regions of the genome. Transcription introduces several biases in mutational patterns; in particular it invokes strand specific mutations. In order to understand the forces that have shaped transcripts during evolution, one has to study mutation patterns associated with transcription across animals.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using multiple alignments of related species we estimated the regional single-nucleotide substitution patterns along genes in four vertebrate taxa: primates, rodents, laurasiatheria and bony fishes. Our analysis is focused on intronic and intergenic regions and reveals differences in the patterns of substitution asymmetries between mammals and fishes. In mammals, the levels of asymmetries are stronger for genes starting within CpG islands than in genes lacking this property. In contrast to all other species analyzed, we found a mutational pressure in dog and stickleback, promoting an increase of GC-contents in the proximity to transcriptional start sites.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We propose that the asymmetric patterns in transcribed regions are results of transcription associated mutagenic processes and transcription coupled repair, which both seem to evolve in a taxon related manner. We also discuss alternative mechanisms that can generate strand biases and involves error prone DNA polymerases and reverse transcription. A localized increase of the GC content near the transcription start site is a signature of biased gene conversion (BGC) that occurs during recombination and heteroduplex formation. Since dog and stickleback are known to be subject to rapid adaptations due to population bottlenecks and breeding, we further hypothesize that an increase in recombination rates near gene starts has been part of an adaptive process.</p

A Study of the Effects of Online Advertising: A Focus on Pop-Up and In-Line Ads

Pop-up, pop-under, and in-line ads have been said to be intrusive, and previous findings suggest that they could have important effects on user perception and cognition. Using a 2x2 factorial design, this experimental study examines the effects of those ads. Besides a control group without ads, factors included ad placement (pop-up vs inline) and ad congruence (with the site\u27s content or not). Results indicated that intention to return was impaired by ads; retention of website information was higher when ads were inline or when ads were not congruent with website content; and retention of ad content was higher for inline ads and those that were not congruent to the content of the website. However, contrary to expectations, intentions to return were not affected by ad placement, retention of site content was not affected by the existence of ads, and intrusiveness of ads was not affected by ad congruence