Long-distance rail in Europe: Comparing the forms of head-on competition across Europe

Europe is finally entering a season of liberalisation in the long-distance rail passenger market, which takes the form of on-track competition among public and private operators. The paper provides a broad-scope comparison of relevant European markets, belonging to liberalised and non-liberalised countries, aiming to point out the patterns in terms of supply, competition model and prices. The paper is based on a sample of heterogeneous 69 city-pairs, analysed in two fourteen days periods in 2019 (May/June and November). All available modes are observed, collecting info on companies, frequency of services, and cheapest price. The analysis starts from a schematisation of different business models, based on literature. Then, using the database, we study the country's supply structure, size, and level of intermodal and intra-modal competition through HHIs. Prices are analysed in two steps: the average prices and the price dispersion, searching for their main determinants, including but not limited to competition. Results show that a higher competition level is not always corresponding to low prices, which are instead determined by many other factors such as size of market, demand, socio-economic characteristics, subsidies, production costs, speed advantage, strength of the incumbent, etc. The competition level, instead, directly influences the quality, the supplied capacity, and the price dispersion

European consensus on grading bone marrow fibrosis and assessment of cellularity

Quantification of characteristic bone marrow biopsy features includes basic parameters such as cellularity and fiber content. These are important to assess the dynamics of disease processes with a significant impact on risk stratification, survival patterns and, especially, therapy-related changes. A panel of experienced European pathologists and a foreign expert evaluated, at a multi-headed microscope, a large number of representative slides of trephine biopsies from patients with myelofibrosis in an attempt to reach a consensus on how to grade cellularity and fibrosis. This included a critical evaluation of previously described scoring systems. During the microscopic analysis and subsequent discussion and voting, the importance of age-dependent decrease in cellularity was recognized. Grading of myelofibrosis was simplified by using four easily reproducible categories including differentiation between reticulin and collagen. A consensus was reached that the density of fibers must be assessed in relation to the hematopoietic tissue. This feature is especially important in order to avoid a false impression of a reduced fiber content in fatty and/or edematous bone marrow samples after treatment. The consensus for measuring myelofibrosis by clear and reproducible guidelines achieved by our group should allow for precise grading during the disease process and after therapy

Study of Bulk Damage of High Dose Gamma Irradiated p-type Silicon Diodes with Various Resistivities

The bulk damage of p-type silicon detectors caused by high doses of gamma irradiation has been studied. The study was carried out on three types of n$^{+}$-in-p silicon diodes with comparable geometries but different initial resistivities. This allowed to determine how different initial parameters of studied samples influence radiation-induced changes in the measured characteristics. The diodes were irradiated by a Cobalt-60 gamma source to total ionizing doses ranging from 0.50 up to 8.28 MGy, and annealed for 80 minutes at 60 {\deg}C. The Geant4 toolkit for simulation of the passage of particles through matter was used to simulate the deposited energy homogeneity, to verify the equal distribution of total deposited energies through all the layers of irradiated samples, and to calculate the secondary electron spectra in the irradiation box. The main goal of the study was to characterize the gamma-radiation induced displacement damage by measuring current-voltage characteristics (IV), and the evolution of the full depletion voltage with the total ionizing dose, by measuring capacitance-voltage characteristics (CV). It has been observed that the bulk leakage current increases linearly with total ionizing dose, and the damage coefficient depends on the initial resistivity of the silicon diode. The effective doping concentration and therefore full depletion voltage significantly decreases with increasing total ionizing dose, before starting to increase again at a specific dose. We assume that this decrease is caused by the effect of acceptor removal. Another noteworthy observation of this study is that the IV and CV measurements of the gamma irradiated diodes do not reveal any annealing effect

Structure peculiarities of cementite and their influence on the magnetic characteristics

The iron carbide $Fe_3C$ is studied by the first-principle density functional theory. It is shown that the crystal structure with the carbon disposition in a prismatic environment has the lowest total energy and the highest energy of magnetic anisotropy as compared to the structure with carbon in an octahedron environment. This fact explains the behavior of the coercive force upon annealing of the plastically deformed samples. The appearance of carbon atoms in the octahedron environment can be revealed by Mossbauer experiment.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables. submitted to Phys.Rev.

The loss of anisotropy in MgB2 with Sc substitution and its relationship with the critical temperature

The electrical conductivity anisotropy of the sigma-bands is calculated for the (Mg,Sc)B2 system using a virtual crystal model. Our results reveal that anisotropy drops with relatively little scandium content (< 30%); this behaviour coincides with the lowering of Tc and the reduction of the Kohn anomaly. This anisotropy loss is also found in the Al and C doped systems. In this work it is argued that the anisotropy, or 2D character, of the sigma-bands is an important parameter for the understanding of the high Tc found in MgB2

Substituting the main group element in cobalt - iron based Heusler alloys: Co2_2FeAl1−x_{1-x}Six_x

This work reports about electronic structure calculations for the Heusler compound Co$_2$FeAl$_{1-x}$Si$_x$. Particular emphasis was put on the role of the main group element in this compound. The substitution of Al by Si leads to an increase of the number of valence electrons with increasing Si content and may be seen as electron-doping. Self-consistent electronic structure calculations were performed to investigate the consequences of the electron doping for the magnetic properties. The series Co$_2$FeAl$_{1-x}$Si$_x$ is found to exhibit half-metallic ferromagnetism and the magnetic moment follows the Slater-Pauling rule. It is shown that the electron-doping stabilises the gap in the minority states for $x=0.5$.Comment: J. Phys. D (accepted

Shower development of particles with momenta from 15 GeV to 150 GeV in the CALICE scintillator-tungsten hadronic calorimeter

We present a study of showers initiated by electrons, pions, kaons, and protons with momenta from 15 GeV to 150 GeV in the highly granular CALICE scintillator-tungsten analogue hadronic calorimeter. The data were recorded at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron in 2011. The analysis includes measurements of the calorimeter response to each particle type as well as measurements of the energy resolution and studies of the longitudinal and radial shower development for selected particles. The results are compared to Geant4 simulations (version 9.6.p02). In the study of the energy resolution we include previously published data with beam momenta from 1 GeV to 10 GeV recorded at the CERN Proton Synchrotron in 2010.Comment: 35 pages, 21 figures, 8 table

Performance of the first prototype of the CALICE scintillator strip electromagnetic calorimeter

A first prototype of a scintillator strip-based electromagnetic calorimeter was built, consisting of 26 layers of tungsten absorber plates interleaved with planes of 45x10x3 mm3 plastic scintillator strips. Data were collected using a positron test beam at DESY with momenta between 1 and 6 GeV/c. The prototype's performance is presented in terms of the linearity and resolution of the energy measurement. These results represent an important milestone in the development of highly granular calorimeters using scintillator strip technology. This technology is being developed for a future linear collider experiment, aiming at the precise measurement of jet energies using particle flow techniques

Infrastructure for Detector Research and Development towards the International Linear Collider

The EUDET-project was launched to create an infrastructure for developing and testing new and advanced detector technologies to be used at a future linear collider. The aim was to make possible experimentation and analysis of data for institutes, which otherwise could not be realized due to lack of resources. The infrastructure comprised an analysis and software network, and instrumentation infrastructures for tracking detectors as well as for calorimetry.Comment: 54 pages, 48 picture

Hadron shower decomposition in the highly granular CALICE analogue hadron calorimeter

The spatial development of hadronic showers in the CALICE scintillator-steel analogue hadron calorimeter is studied using test beam data collected at CERN and FNAL for single positive pions and protons with initial momenta in the range from 10 to 80 GeV/c. Both longitudinal and radial development of hadron showers are parametrised with two-component functions. The parametrisation is fit to test beam data and simulations using the QGSP_BERT and FTFP_BERT physics lists from Geant4 version 9.6. The parameters extracted from data and simulated samples are compared for the two types of hadrons. The response to pions and the ratio of the non-electromagnetic to the electromagnetic calorimeter response, h/e, are estimated using the extrapolation and decomposition of the longitudinal profiles.Comment: 38 pages, 19 figures, 5 tables; author list changed; submitted to JINS