1,372 research outputs found
Modernist awareness and responsiveness to socio-political change in the work of Christoph Hein
A Consultative Approach to Charter Party Agreements Based on Virtual On Time Arrival
Charter Party agreements underpin the relationship between ship owners and charterers. The agreement guarantees the performance of a vessel in terms of speed and fuel consumption. On this basis the charterers plan the arrival of their cargo and their profit margin. However, ship performance is degraded by age, periods between maintenance and many vessels fail to perform as expected. Moreover the performance is only warranted during the specific conditions stated in the charter party which are not always clear. These usually refer to Beaufort Force (BF) and the Douglas Sea and Swell (DSS) scale which is archaic in the age of Numerical Weather Prediction. Given these conditions, the stage is set for conflict and there are often disputes over the weather conditions experienced. Moreover shipsâ often do not arrive on time because the charterer has assumed that the ship will make good its warranted speed and not taken account of the forecast weather conditions. The authors propose a new way of approaching charter agreements with the emphasis on consultation rather than confrontation facilitated by a new web based software platform
Power regeneration in the primary suspension of a railway vehicle
This paper presents an assessment of the potential for the use of power regenerating dampers (PRDs) in railway vehicle primary suspension systems equipped with the âHybrid Modeâ and âReplace Modeâ, and the evaluation of the potential/recoverable power that can be obtained. The power regenerating damper is configured as a hydraulic-electromagnetic based damper. Implications for ride comfort and running safety are also commented for investigating the performance of the suspension system. Several case studies of generic railway vehicle primary suspension systems are modelled and configured to include a power regenerating damper with two different configuration modes. Simulations are then carried out on track with typical irregularities for a generic UK passenger vehicle. The performance of the modified vehicle including regenerated power, ride comfort and running safety is evaluated. Analysis of key influencing factors are also carried out to examine their effects on power capability, ride comfort and running safety to guide the primary suspension design/specification
Manipulating prohibitin levels provides evidence for an in vivo role in androgen regulation of prostate tumours
Current hormonal therapies for prostate cancer are effective initially, but inevitably tumours progress to an advanced, metastatic stage, often referred to as âandrogen independentâ. However, the androgen receptor (AR) signalling pathway is still key for their growth. It is speculated that tumours escape hormonal control via reduction in corepressor proteins. Manipulating such proteins is thus a potential therapeutic strategy to halt or even reverse tumour progression. We aimed to elucidate the effects of altering levels of the AR corepressor and androgen-target protein prohibitin (PHB) on prostate tumour growth. Prostate cancer cells incorporating an integrated androgen-responsive reporter gene and stably expressing vectors to inducibly overexpress or knockdown PHB were generated and used to assess effects on androgen signalling (by real time imaging) and tumour growth both in culture and in vivo. PHB overexpression inhibited AR activity and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) expression as well as androgen-dependent growth of cells, inducing rapid accumulation in G0/G1. Conversely, reduction in PHB increased AR activity, PSA expression, androgen-mediated growth and S-phase entry. In vivo, doxycycline-induced PHB regulation resulted in marked changes in AR activity, and showed significant effects upon tumour growth. Overexpression led to tumour growth arrest and protection from hormonal starvation, whereas RNAi knockdown resulted in accelerated tumour growth, even in castrated mice. This study provides proof of principle that i) reduction in PHB promotes both androgen-dependent and âandrogen-independentâ tumour growth, and ii) altering AR activity via increasing levels or activity of corepressors is a valid therapeutic strategy for advanced prostate cancer
An exploration of the factors that influence footwear selection in women with Rheumatoid Arthritis â a qualitative study
rf-studies of vortex dynamics in isotropic type-II superconductors
We have measured the surface impedance of thick superconductors in the mixed
state over a broad 2 kHz - 20 MHz frequency range. The depinning cross-over is
observed; but it is much broader than expected from classical theories of
pinning. A striking result is the existence of size effects which invalidate
the common interpretation of the low-frequency surface inductance in terms of a
single penetration depth. Instead, a two-mode description of vortex dynamics,
assuming free vortex flow in the bulk and surface pinning, accounts
quantitatively for the spectrum of the complex apparent penetration depth.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, 28 reference
Draft Genome Sequence Of Burkholderia Andropogonis Type Strain Icmp2807, Isolated From Sorghum Bicolor.
Here, we report the draft genome sequence of Burkholderia andropogonis ICMP2807, a phytopathogenic bacterium isolated from Sorghum bicolor plants in the United States.
Corporate financing decisions: UK survey evidence
Despite theoretical developments in recent years, our understanding of corporate capital structure remains incomplete. Prior empirical research has been dominated by archival regression studies which are limited in their ability to fully reflect the diversity found in practice. The present paper reports on a comprehensive survey of corporate financing decision-making in UK listed companies. A key finding is that firms are heterogeneous in their capital structure policies. About half of the firms seek to maintain a target debt level, consistent with trade-off theory, but 60 per cent claim to follow a financing hierarchy, consistent with pecking order theory. These two theories are not viewed by respondents as either mutually exclusive or exhaustive. Many of the theoretical determinants of debt levels are widely accepted by respondents, in particular the importance of interest tax shield, financial distress, agency costs and also, at least implicitly, information asymmetry. Results also indicate that cross-country institutional differences have a significant impact on financial decisions
Machine Learning Developments in ROOT
ROOT is a software framework for large-scale data analysis that provides basic and advanced statistical methods used by high-energy physics experiments. It includes machine learning tools from the ROOT-integrated Toolkit for Multivariate Analysis (TMVA). We present several recent developments in TMVA, including a new modular design, new algorithms for pre-processing, cross-validation, hyperparameter-tuning, deep-learning and interfaces to other machine-learning software packages. TMVA is additionally integrated with Jupyter, making it accessible with a browser
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