Investigating maintenance decisions during initial fielding of rolling stock

Successful organizations align technology with their competitive strategy. The challenge is first to make the right and timely decisions when acquiring new technology. Next, organizations must make decisions that help configure the maintenance services to fit the technology they acquired. Ideally, new technology should fit seamlessly with company practices and ways of working. In practice, this is rarely the case and there is misalignment. For maintenance service providers, the problem of fitting maintenance of new capital assets to traditional ways of working is especially important. This paper examines the decisions made by a maintenance service provider to maximize cost efficiency during initial fielding of rolling stock. We explore the different decisions made to design the support organization around newly acquired trains used for passenger service

Biology and ecology of the non-indigenous goby Acentrogobius pflaumii (Bleeker 1853) in the Swan-Canning Estuary

Non-indigenous species can have significant deleterious impacts on the ecosystems in which they become established. Following the recent establishment of the Striped Sandgoby Acentrogobius pflaumii in the Swan-Canning Estuary, south-western Australia, a study was initiated to determine its spatial and temporal distribution and biological characteristics. Although A. pflaumii was not recorded in the coarse sandy sediment present in the nearshore, shallow waters of the estuary, substantial numbers were recorded on soft muddy sediments in the deeper waters, where it comprised 55% of the total number of gobies. While A. pflaumii dominated the gobiid fauna in Lower Melville Water (~98%), its contributions declined progressively upstream, indicating a preference for waters with a salinity close to that of full strength sea water. Size and age compositions determined that the oldest individual was 3.9 years old and 89 mm in total length, but that the population is dominanted by 1+ individuals. Population mortality and turn-over rates are therefore likely to be very high. Both males and females attained > 87% of their asymptotic lengths (L∞) of 74.9 and 69.3 mm, respectively, during the first year of life, which is characteristic of smaller, shorter-lived species of fish. The results from gonadosomatic indices and the histological examination of gonads suggest that A. pflaumii is able to spawn throughout most of the year, with a peak from November to February. The presence of mature, spawning and depleted gonads in A. pflaumii suggests that this species spawns within the Swan-Canning Estuary. Acentrogobius pflaumii can be thus considered an estuarine & marine species like Favonigobius lateralis. As A. pflaumii attains high densities over a relatively large part of the estuary and can breed within the system, it is likely to be a permanent resident and further work is needed to determine its impact on the native gobiid fauna

Ricerca tecnologica per progettare nel contesto post-industriale

Il volume raccoglie in maniera ragionata contributi, lectures ed interventi presentati nelle tre giornate di studio della VIII edizione degli Incontri dell'Annunziata_Giornate di studio sull'innovazione tecnologica che si sono svolti ad Ascoli Piceno dal 26 al 28 maggio 2010, dedicate ad un confronto dello stato dell'arte della ricerca tecnologica in Italia

Cantor and band spectra for periodic quantum graphs with magnetic fields

We provide an exhaustive spectral analysis of the two-dimensional periodic square graph lattice with a magnetic field. We show that the spectrum consists of the Dirichlet eigenvalues of the edges and of the preimage of the spectrum of a certain discrete operator under the discriminant (Lyapunov function) of a suitable Kronig-Penney Hamiltonian. In particular, between any two Dirichlet eigenvalues the spectrum is a Cantor set for an irrational flux, and is absolutely continuous and has a band structure for a rational flux. The Dirichlet eigenvalues can be isolated or embedded, subject to the choice of parameters. Conditions for both possibilities are given. We show that generically there are infinitely many gaps in the spectrum, and the Bethe-Sommerfeld conjecture fails in this case.Comment: Misprints correcte

The effect on melanoma risk of genes previously associated with telomere length.

Telomere length has been associated with risk of many cancers, but results are inconsistent. Seven single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) previously associated with mean leukocyte telomere length were either genotyped or well-imputed in 11108 case patients and 13933 control patients from Europe, Israel, the United States and Australia, four of the seven SNPs reached a P value under .05 (two-sided). A genetic score that predicts telomere length, derived from these seven SNPs, is strongly associated (P = 8.92x10(-9), two-sided) with melanoma risk. This demonstrates that the previously observed association between longer telomere length and increased melanoma risk is not attributable to confounding via shared environmental effects (such as ultraviolet exposure) or reverse causality. We provide the first proof that multiple germline genetic determinants of telomere length influence cancer risk.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Oxford University Press via http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jnci/dju26

Model-independent search for CP violation in D0→K−K+π−π+ and D0→π−π+π+π− decays

A search for CP violation in the phase-space structures of D0 and View the MathML source decays to the final states K−K+π−π+ and π−π+π+π− is presented. The search is carried out with a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.0 fb−1 collected in 2011 by the LHCb experiment in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. For the K−K+π−π+ final state, the four-body phase space is divided into 32 bins, each bin with approximately 1800 decays. The p-value under the hypothesis of no CP violation is 9.1%, and in no bin is a CP asymmetry greater than 6.5% observed. The phase space of the π−π+π+π− final state is partitioned into 128 bins, each bin with approximately 2500 decays. The p-value under the hypothesis of no CP violation is 41%, and in no bin is a CP asymmetry greater than 5.5% observed. All results are consistent with the hypothesis of no CP violation at the current sensitivity

Search for the lepton-flavor-violating decays Bs0→e±μ∓ and B0→e±μ∓

A search for the lepton-flavor-violating decays Bs0→e±μ∓ and B0→e±μ∓ is performed with a data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.0  fb-1 of pp collisions at √s=7  TeV, collected by the LHCb experiment. The observed number of Bs0→e±μ∓ and B0→e±μ∓ candidates is consistent with background expectations. Upper limits on the branching fractions of both decays are determined to be B(Bs0→e±μ∓)101  TeV/c2 and MLQ(B0→e±μ∓)>126  TeV/c2 at 95% C.L., and are a factor of 2 higher than the previous bounds