Service Performance Indicators for Infrastructure Investment

Infrastructure systems serving modern economies are highly complex, highly interconnected, and often highly interactive. The result is increased complexity in investment decision-making, and increased challenges in prioritising that investment. However, this prioritisation is vital to developing a long-term, sound, robust and achievable pipeline of national infrastructure. One key to effective, objective and prudent investment prioritisation is understanding the real performance of infrastructure. Many metrics are employed to this end, and many are imposed by governments or regulators, but often these metrics relate only to inputs or outputs in a production process. Whilst these metrics may be useful for delivery agencies, they largely fail to address the real expectations or requirements of infrastructure users — quality of service, safety, reliability, and resilience. What is required is a set of metrics which address not outputs but outcomes — that is, how well does the infrastructure network meet service needs? This paper reports on a study undertaken at a national level, to identify service needs across a range of infrastructure sectors, to assess service performance metrics in use, and to show how they or other suitable metrics can be used to prioritise investment decisions across sectors and jurisdictions

Numerical investigation of novel microwave applicators based on zero-order mode resonance for hyperthermia treatment of cancer

This paper characterizes three novel microwave applicators based on zero-order mode resonators for use in hyperthermia treatment of cancer. The radiation patterns are studied with numerical simulations in muscle tissue-equivalent model at 434 MHz. The relative performance of the applicators is compared in terms of reflection coefficient, current distribution, power deposition (SAR) pattern, effective field size in 2D and 3D tissue volumes, and penetration depth. One particular configuration generated the most uniform SAR pattern, with 25% SAR covering 84 % of the treatment volume extending to 1 cm depth under the aperture, while remaining above 58% coverage as deep as 3 cm under the aperture. Recommendations are made to further optimize this structure

How was the Hubble sequence 6 Gyrs ago?

The way galaxies assemble their mass to form the well-defined Hubble sequence is amongst the most debated topic in modern cosmology. One difficulty is to link distant galaxies to those at present epoch. We aim at establishing how were the galaxies of the Hubble sequence, 6 Gyrs ago. We intend to derive a past Hubble sequence that can be causally linked to the present-day one. We selected samples of nearby galaxies from the SDSS and of distant galaxies from the GOODS survey. We verified that each sample is representative of galaxies. We further showed that the observational conditions necessary to retrieve their morphological classification are similar in an unbiased way. Morphological analysis has been done in an identical way for all galaxies in the two samples. We found an absence of number evolution for elliptical and lenticular galaxies, which strikingly contrasts with the strong evolution of spiral and peculiar galaxies. Spiral galaxies were 2.3 times less abundant in the past, that is exactly compensated by the strong decrease by a factor 5 of peculiar galaxies. It strongly suggests that more than half of the present-day spirals had peculiar morphologies, 6 Gyrs ago, and this has to be accounted by any scenario of galactic disk evolution and formation. The past Hubble sequence can be used to test these scenarios as well as to test evolution of fundamental planes for spirals and bulges.Comment: Version accepted by Astronomy and Astrophysics, October 21 2009. Including low resolution images. 11 pages, 8 figure

Superconducting charge qubits from a microscopic many-body perspective

The quantised Josephson junction equation that underpins the behaviour of charge qubits and other tunnel devices is usually derived through cannonical quantisation of the classical macroscopic Josephson relations. However, this approach may neglect effects due to the fact that the charge qubit consists of a superconducting island of finite size connected to a large superconductor. We show that the well known quantised Josephson equation can be derived directly and simply from a microscopic many-body Hamiltonian. By choosing the appropriate strong coupling limit we produce a highly simplified Hamiltonian that nevertheless allows us to go beyond the mean field limit and predict further finite-size terms in addition to the basic equation.Comment: Accepted for J Phys Condensed Matte