Aphodius Erraticus, Linn., on Montreal Island

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Warriors and Politicians

With historical case studies ranging from the Revolutionary War to the war in Iraq, this new book shows how and why the US military is caught between two civilian masters – the President and Congress – in responding to the challenges of warfighting, rearmament, and transformation. Charles Stevenson skilfully shows how, although the United States has never faced the danger of a military coup, the relations between civilian leaders and the military have not always been easy. Presidents have contended with military leaders who were reluctant to carry out their orders. Generals and Admirals have appealed to Congress for sympathy and support. Congressional leaders have tried to impose their own visions and strategies on the US armed forces. This triangular struggle has recurred time and again, in wartime and in efforts to reshape the military for future wars. Illustrating this dual system of civilian military control in a series of case studies, this new volume starts from the way the Continental Congress ran the Revolutionary War by committee and concludes with the George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld efforts to transform the US military into a modern terrorist-fighting force. This detailed coverage shows how warriors and politicians interacted at key points in US history. This book will be of great interest to all students of the US Military, government of the United States and of strategic and military studies in general

Creating a Maine railroad landscape, 1890-1897: architecture of the Portland & Rumford Falls Railway and the Rumford Falls & Rangeley Lakes Railroad

In 1890, paper magnate Hugh Chisholm chartered the Portland & Rumford Falls Railway to provide service between Maine's largest city and the nascent industrial community of Rumford Falls. From 1890 to 1897, directors of that railroad embarked upon a cohesive building program to distinguish its stations from competitors and to attract traffic to Rumford Falls. This railroad's program represents a seminal moment in small town railroad station architecture because it was an early manifestation of a planned, replicated design. Civil engineer Frederic Danforth implemented the comprehensive landscape developed by architect Edwin Lewis. This pattern of architect-driven designs would be developed in the early twentieth century by railroad companies nationwide as they more aggressively created corporate branding, while also balancing community relations. In 1894, Chisholm and associates chartered a second rail line, the Rumford Falls & Rangeley Lakes Railroad, to service nearby timberlands and outdoor sporting locales. This line would further increase the prowess of Rumford Falls and the profitability of the Portland & Rumford Falls Railway. Lewis was not associated with this project, but its directors maintained a complementary architectural program almost indistinguishable from the earlier campaign. This thesis examines the initial development of the two rail lines based on photographs, architectural drawings, and documentary research. It explores how these building programs fit into the greater schema of corporate railroad architectural development. It elucidates the national trends toward an interconnected industrial landscape and early attempts at corporate branding through vernacular architecture

Flow visualization and flow field measurements of a 1/12 scale tilt rotor aircraft in hover

The results are given of flow visualization studies and inflow velocity field measurements performed on a 1/12 scale model of the XV-15 tilt rotor aircraft in the hover mode. The complex recirculating flow due to the rotor-wake-body interactions characteristic of tilt rotors was studied visually using neutrally buoyant soap bubbles and quantitatively using hot wire anemometry. Still and video photography were used to record the flow patterns. Analysis of the photos and video provided information on the physical dimensions of the recirculating fountain flow and on details of the flow including the relative unsteadiness and turbulence characteristics of the flow. Recirculating flows were also observed along the length of the fuselage. Hot wire anemometry results indicate that the wing under the rotor acts to obstruct the inflow causing a deficit in the inflow velocities over the inboard region of the model. Hot wire anemometry also shows that the turbulence intensities in the inflow are much higher in the recirculating fountain reingestion zone

The Cock Shall Crow : A Ditty

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/5769/thumbnail.jp

COBACABANA (control of balance by card based navigation):an alternative to kanban in the pure flow shop?

Kanban systems are widely applied in practice as they represent a simple yet effective means of controlling production. But they suffer from a lack of load balancing capabilities, which hinders their application even to pure flow shops if there is variability. In response, this study focuses on COBACABANA (Control of Balance by Card Based Navigation), a card-based production control approach based on the Workload Control concept that was recently introduced in the literature. COBACABANA was developed for high-variety job shop contexts, but we argue it can also provide an important control alternative to kanban systems in pure flow shops. We first show that, in the pure flow shop, the control loop structure of COBACABANA resembles that of a kanban system when the flow of jobs is controlled. But a distinct difference is COBACABANA׳s unique focus on load balancing. Using simulation, we then demonstrate the potential of COBACABANA to improve performance in a pure flow shop with high demand and processing time variability. Results show that a fixed gateway station – inherent to a pure flow shop – presents a structural constraint that makes COBACABANA׳s original starvation avoidance mechanism, which injects work to a starving station, dysfunctional. An alternative is prioritizing jobs with short processing times at upstream stations to ensure quick replenishment takes place at downstream stations threatened by starvation. This has important implications not only for COBACABANA but for priority dispatching. Although card-based systems are typically combined with first-come-first-served dispatching, our results suggest this may be inappropriate in flow shops with processing time variability

Card-based production control:a review of the control mechanisms underpinning Kanban, ConWIP, POLCA and COBACABANA systems

Since the emergence of Kanban, there has been much research into card-based control systems. This has included attempts to improve Kanban and/or develop alternative systems, particularly ConWIP (i.e. Constant Work-In-Process), POLCA (i.e. Paired-cell Overlapping Loops of Cards with Authorisation) and COBACABANA (i.e. Control of Balance by Card-Based Navigation). Yet, to date, no unifying review of the mechanisms underpinning these systems has been presented. As a consequence, managers are not provided with sufficient support for choosing an appropriate system for their shop; and researchers lack a clear picture of how the mechanisms compare, leading to several misconceptions. This paper reviews the control mechanisms underpinning the Kanban, ConWIP, POLCA and COBACABANA systems. By comparing the ‘control mechanism’ (i.e. the loop structure and card properties) and ‘contextual factors’ (i.e. routing variability, processing time variability, and whether stations are decoupled by inventory or the flow of jobs is controlled), we provide managers with guidance on which system to choose. For research, we show for example that most criticisms put forward against Kanban systems, e.g. to justify the development of ConWIP, POLCA or COBACABANA, only apply to work-in-process Kanban systems and not to production Kanban systems. Future research directions for each control system are outlined

The performance effects of composition changes on sector specific stock indices: The case of European listed real estate

This paper examines the impact of changes in the composition of real estate stock indices, considering companies both joining and leaving the indices. Stocks that are newly included not only see a short-term increase in their share price, but trading volumes increase in a permanent fashion following the event. This highlights the importance of indices in not only a benchmarking context but also in enhancing investor awareness and aiding liquidity. By contrast, as anticipated, the share prices of firms removed from indices fall around the time of the index change. The fact that the changes in share prices, either upwards for index inclusions or downwards for deletions, are generally not reversed, would indicate that the movements are not purely due to price pressure, but rather are more consistent with the information content hypothesis. There is no evidence, however, that index changes significantly affect the volatility of price changes or their operating performances as measured by their earnings per share