Designing Efficient Taxi Pickup Operations at Airports

This paper provides a practical procedure for designing efficient taxi pickup operations at airports. How to do this effectively is an open question. Solutions are not available, and practices vary. They reflect different approaches to and lack of research on the subject. The solutions are often unsatisfactory. At many airports, passengers routinely suffer long waits outdoors, exposed to the elements, after a tiring journey. Such disagreeable experiences are avoidable. Designing efficient taxi pickup operations at airports is problematic. The peculiarities of the process preclude easy solutions. First, the process involves queuing, so system performance is a nonlinear function of the loads. Second, it features unstable transient situations, since travelers typically arrive in bulk over short periods. Third, traffic is significantly differentiated and consists of a wide variety of groups implying different service characteristics. Standard results from queuing theory thus do not have a useful application to this problem. The design process uses simulation that is based on detailed observation of local practices. It involves four steps: (a) detailed local measurements of the arrival of both travelers and taxis, and the service rates provided by taxis in different queuing positions; (b) creation and validation of a simulation model sufficiently detailed to account for these realities; (c) exploration of design alternatives to estimate the characteristics of the service they would provide; and (d) selection of a preferred design that properly balances efforts to minimize average and extreme wait times. The paper demonstrates the procedure through application to Lisbon International Airport, Portugal.SIMUL8 Corporatio

A State of the Art on Railway Simulation Modelling Software Packages and Their Application to Designing Baggage Transfer Services

There is a new baggage transfer service suggested in Newcastle Central Station. In order to prove that this service is feasible, a simulation model can be developed to test the concept and operating pattern behind. For the purposes of this paper, we intend to organize a literature review on simulation modelling software packages employed to study service design. Specifically, this paper has compared five different simulation software packages used by the railway industry to study service-related challenges. As a result, it is suggested that SIMUL8, a macroscopic discrete event-based software package, should be used among the five compared ones because of its simplicity and the ability to give practical results for the design and performance of such a baggage transfer system

Actin Nemaline Myopathy Mouse Reproduces Disease, Suggests Other Actin Disease Phenotypes and Provides Cautionary Note on Muscle Transgene Expression

Mutations in the skeletal muscle α-actin gene (ACTA1) cause congenital myopathies including nemaline myopathy, actin aggregate myopathy and rod-core disease. The majority of patients with ACTA1 mutations have severe hypotonia and do not survive beyond the age of one. A transgenic mouse model was generated expressing an autosomal dominant mutant (D286G) of ACTA1 (identified in a severe nemaline myopathy patient) fused with EGFP. Nemaline bodies were observed in multiple skeletal muscles, with serial sections showing these correlated to aggregates of the mutant skeletal muscle α-actin-EGFP. Isolated extensor digitorum longus and soleus muscles were significantly weaker than wild-type (WT) muscle at 4 weeks of age, coinciding with the peak in structural lesions. These 4 week-old mice were ∼30% less active on voluntary running wheels than WT mice. The α-actin-EGFP protein clearly demonstrated that the transgene was expressed equally in all myosin heavy chain (MHC) fibre types during the early postnatal period, but subsequently became largely confined to MHCIIB fibres. Ringbinden fibres, internal nuclei and myofibrillar myopathy pathologies, not typical features in nemaline myopathy or patients with ACTA1 mutations, were frequently observed. Ringbinden were found in fast fibre predominant muscles of adult mice and were exclusively MHCIIB-positive fibres. Thus, this mouse model presents a reliable model for the investigation of the pathobiology of nemaline body formation and muscle weakness and for evaluation of potential therapeutic interventions. The occurrence of core-like regions, internal nuclei and ringbinden will allow analysis of the mechanisms underlying these lesions. The occurrence of ringbinden and features of myofibrillar myopathy in this mouse model of ACTA1 disease suggests that patients with these pathologies and no genetic explanation should be screened for ACTA1 mutations

The future of liquid chromatographic separations should include post column derivatisations : a discussion view point based on the perspective for the analysis of vitamin D

The coupling of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with post column derivatisation (HPLC-PCD) will increase the sensitivity of an instrument to the target molecule, improve specificity by selective derivatisation to remove potential interferences from the matrix, and be cost-effective; all these factors may well prove that PCD is an alternative to existing techniques for routine analysis. Calcidiol (25(OH)D) concentrations are used in the determination of vitamin D deficiency in humans, and there is growing interest and demand in its analysis with some controversy surrounding the sensitivity and specificity of its detection. 25(OH)D analysis is currently performed using either competitive binding assays or HPLC analysis, coupled with detection by a variety of means, such as, UV–Vis absorption, electrochemical or mass spectroscopy (MS) detection. HPLC coupled with MS (HPLC-MS) detection is the gold standard for 25(OH)D analysis due to its sensitivity and selectivity compared to all other techniques, however, its utility is limited by its high cost. This article reviews the current status of HPLC based techniques in the detection of 25(OH)D (and its metabolites), and further explores the use of HPLC-PCD

Thermodynamic differences between deuterated and protonated polystyrenes using reversed phase liquid chromatography

Deuterated compounds are generally considered to possess very similar properties to their protonated analogues. Reversed phase liquid chromatography (RPLC) was used to measure thermodynamic interactions between deuterated and protonated n-butyl polystyrenes and a C18 stationary phase. Significant differences in enthalpies and entropies of interaction were observed for deuterated and protonated n-butyl polystyrenes. This is very important because many techniques, such as small-angle neutron scattering and neutron reflectivity, assume that the interaction of these molecules are identical

Retention of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons on propyl-phenyl stationary phases in reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography

A study on the retention of PAHs on three Propyl-phenyl stationary phases was conducted, assessing absolute retention, selectivity, retention correlation and thermodynamic behaviour. The chromatographic retention data revealed that each of the three Prop

An assessment of the retention behaviour of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons on reversed phase stationary phases : selectivity and retention on C18 and phenyl-type surfaces

In this manuscript the retention and selectivity of a set of linear and non-linear PAHs were evaluated on five different reversed-phase columns. These phases included C18 and C18 Aqua stationary phases, as well as three phenyl phases: Propyl-phenyl, Synergi polar-RP and Cosmosil 5PBB phase. Overall, the results revealed that the phenyl-type columns offered better separation performance for the linear PAHs, while the separation of the structural isomer PAHs was enhanced on the C18 columns. The Propyl-phenyl column was found to have the highest molecular-stationary phase interactions, as evidenced by the greatest rate of change in ‘S’ (0.71) as a function of the molecular weight in the PAH homologous series, despite having the lowest surface coverage (3% carbon load) (where S is the slope of a plot of log k versus the solvent composition). In contrast, the C18 Aqua column, having the highest surface coverage (15% carbon load) was found to have the second lowest molecular-stationary phase interactions (rate of change in S = 0.61). Interestingly, the Synergi polar-RP column, which also is a phenyl stationary phase behaved more ‘C18-like’ than ‘phenyl-like’ in many of the tests undertaken. This is probably not unexpected since all five phases were reversed phase

An assessment of the retention behaviour of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons on reversed phase stationary phases : thermodynamic behaviour on C18 and phenyl-type surfaces

The thermodynamic retention behaviour of a linear series of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) was investigated on C18 and selected phenyl-type reversed-phase stationary phases, namely C18, C18 Aqua, Propyl-phenyl and Synergi polar-RP stationary phases, using methanol mobile phases. The Propyl-phenyl stationary phase, despite having the lowest surface coverage, was found to exhibit significantly larger enthalpic interactions to the other Phenyl-type phase (Synergi polar-RP) even though this had a much higher surface coverage. This indicated that stronger interactions between the PAHs and the stationary phase ligands were occurring on the Propyl-phenyl phase. Evaluation of the elution band profile of the PAHs in the aqueous methanol mobile phase revealed fairly symmetrical bands for the C18, C18 Aqua and Synergi polar-RP, but severe peak tailing on the Propyl-phenyl phase. A change in mobile phase from methanol to acetonitrile improved the peak shape of the PAHs on the Propyl-phenyl phase, leading to the assumption that unfavourable π–π interactions were occurring between the electron-rich PAHs and the electron-rich phenyl rings of the Propyl-phenyl phase