Current practice in project appraisal in Europe.

The work reported in this paper presents the results from the compilation of the national assessment practices in EU25 Member States and Switzerland. The work was completed as part of the current European Union 6th Framework project HEATCO (Developing Harmonised European Approaches for Transport Costing and Project Assessment), which has the objective of developing a set of harmonised guidelines for project assessment and transport costing at an EU level. This paper presents the starting point to this project. Based on the work described in this paper the HEATCO consortium will be developing common definitions and consistent valuation methods for the evaluation of TEN projects. Previous projects such as EUNET had conducted a similar review to the research presented in this paper. The key reason for repeating the research was the expansion of the EU to 25 countries in May 2004 and the fact that appraisal practices in many countries has evolved since the last survey. A proforma was designed and sent to country representatives to complete. This paper is based predominantly on the results that this data provided. The proforma focused specifically on the use of Cost Benefit Analysis in appraisal with the aim of identifying similarities and differences in country practice. Aside from the national appraisal framework the proforma also considered the individual impacts included in appraisal. The paper describes some of the similarities and differences in how construction costs, time savings, safety and environmental impacts are used across Europe. The paper then concludes with the key differences and similarities as identified by the analysis. This paper aims at providing an overview of the current appraisal practice and more country specific details are given in Odgaard et al (2005)

Features in the ion emission of Cu, Al, and C plasmas produced by ultrafast laser ablation

© 2015 AIP Publishing LLC. The bi-modal nature of charge integrated ion kinetic energy distributions, which result from ultrafast laser produced plasmas, is discussed in this paper. A negatively biased Faraday cup was used as a charge collector to measure ion distributions from three different solid targets that had been irradiated with an ultrafast laser in the fluence range 0.1-1 J/cm2. A bi-modal time of flight distribution is found for all three targets (C, Al, and Cu). In the case of the metallic targets (Al and Cu), high- and low-kinetic energy peaks exhibit quite different dependencies on laser fluence, whereas for the semi-metallic target (C), both peaks scale similarly with ultrafast laser fluence. The results are discussed within the framework of a one dimensional capacitor model resulting in ion acceleration

Nonlinear stability of the ensemble Kalman filter with adaptive covariance inflation

The Ensemble Kalman filter and Ensemble square root filters are data assimilation methods used to combine high dimensional nonlinear models with observed data. These methods have proved to be indispensable tools in science and engineering as they allow computationally cheap, low dimensional ensemble state approximation for extremely high dimensional turbulent forecast models. From a theoretical perspective, these methods are poorly understood, with the exception of a recently established but still incomplete nonlinear stability theory. Moreover, recent numerical and theoretical studies of catastrophic filter divergence have indicated that stability is a genuine mathematical concern and can not be taken for granted in implementation. In this article we propose a simple modification of ensemble based methods which resolves these stability issues entirely. The method involves a new type of adaptive covariance inflation, which comes with minimal additional cost. We develop a complete nonlinear stability theory for the adaptive method, yielding Lyapunov functions and geometric ergodicity under weak assumptions. We present numerical evidence which suggests the adaptive methods have improved accuracy over standard methods and completely eliminate catastrophic filter divergence. This enhanced stability allows for the use of extremely cheap, unstable forecast integrators, which would otherwise lead to widespread filter malfunction.Comment: 34 pages. 4 figure

Antisymmetric tensor contribution to the muon g-2

We investigate the Kalb-Ramond antisymmetric tensor field as solution to the muon $g-2$ problem. In particular we calculate the lowest-order Kalb-Ramond contribution to the muon anomalous magnetic moment and find that we can fit the new experimental value for the anomaly by adjusting the coupling without affecting the electron anomalous magnetic moment results.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur

Assessing student perceptions of the Pharm.D. degree at a private tertiary medical university in India

Background: Pharmacy education in India has expanded to include the Doctorate of Pharmacy degree (Pharm.D.). With clinical practice in early development, job opportunities in India are limited. Graduates often consider pharmacy opportunities abroad. Aims: This study compares Indian students’ career aspirations related to the Pharm.D. degree before and after beginning their programmes. Methods: A 5-point Likert scale paper survey with open ended questions was distributed to all Pharm.D. students (Year 1- 6) at a medical university in India. Results: With a response rate of 83% (144/173), over half of the students’ primary goal was to pursue careers abroad post-graduation (54.2% before, 51.4% after). Data from the last three graduating classes indicated that 28.3% travelled abroad for future studies while 62.3% secured positions in India. Conclusions: Opportunities abroad remain challenging for Indian trained Pharm.D.s’; graduates may consider the expanding clinical opportunities in India

Testing the Effectiveness of Regulation and Competition on Cable Television Rates

Regulation of the cable television industry was marked by remarkable periods of deregulation, re-regulation, and re-deregulation during the 1980s and 1990s. Using FCC firm-level survey data spanning 1993 to 2001, we model and econometrically estimate the effect of regulation and competition on cable rates. Our calculations indicate that while regulation lowered rates for small system operators, it raised them for medium and large systems. Meanwhile, competition consistently decreased rates from 5.6 to 8.8 percent, with even larger declines during periods of regulation. Our results suggest that competition is more effective than regulation in containing cable prices.cable rates, regulation, competition

Advanced undergraduate RC circuits: An experimentalist's perspective

In this paper, an advanced undergraduate RC circuit is studied in two different ways. The circuit is a typical series RC circuit with a time-varying voltage source. The temporal profile of the voltage is an isolated, Gaussian shaped pulse. The voltage across the resistor as a function of time is analysed using two different methods: deriving an analytical expression and an analysis in the Laplace domain. An attempt is made to suggest and address common problems that students may have with understanding such circuits. A qualitative physical interpretation of the circuit operation is developed using Green's function