First Annual Logistics Faculty Salary Survey

While the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB) conducts an annual survey of business school faculty and administrative salaries, the data do not include salary figures for logistics (and related areas such as transportation and supply chain management) faculty. Since the growth in number of logistics faculty positions has continued to exceed the output of doctoral programs in the field for more than a decade, it is logical to assume that logistics faculty salaries, at all levels, are increasing. However, without factual data, what salary should a new logistics Ph.D. expect, and what should an administrator budget for a logistics faculty position? In order to provide such factual data, the authors developed an electronic salary survey and distributed it to 236 faculty at colleges and universities in the United States. It is the intent of the authors to conduct the salary survey annually, and report the results in the Journal of Transportation Management

T.V. viewing guide: "The Adams Chronicles"

T.V. viewing guide: "The Adams Chronicles

Storylines of UK drought based on the 2010–2012 event

Spatially extensive multi-year hydrological droughts cause significant environmental stress. The UK is expected to remain vulnerable to future multi-year droughts under climate change. Existing approaches to quantify hydrological impacts of climate change often rely solely on global climate model (GCM) projections following different emission scenarios. This may miss out low-probability events with significant impacts. As a means of exploring such events, physical climate storyline approaches aim to quantify physically coherent articulations of how observed events could hypothetically have unfolded in alternative ways. This study uses the 2010–2012 drought, the most recent period of severe hydrological drought in the UK, as a basis and analyses storylines based on changes to (1) precondition severity, (2) temporal drought sequence, and (3) climate change. Evidence from multiple storylines shows that the maximum intensity, mean deficit, and duration of the 2010–2012 drought were highly influenced by its meteorological preconditions prior to drought inception, particularly for northern catchments at shorter timescales. The influence of progressively drier preconditions reflects both the spatial variation in drought preconditions and the role of physical catchment characteristics, particularly hydrogeology in the propagation of multi-year droughts. There are two plausible storylines of an additional dry year with dry winter conditions repeated either before the observed drought or replacing the observed dramatic drought termination confirm the vulnerability of UK catchments to a “third dry winter” storyline. Applying the UKCP18 climate projections, we find that drought conditions worsen with global warming with a mitigation of drought conditions by wetter winters in northern catchments at high warming levels. Comparison of the storylines with a benchmark drought (1975–1976) and a protracted multi-year drought (1989–1993) shows that, for each storyline (including the climate change storylines), drought conditions could have matched and exceeded those experienced during the past droughts at catchments across the UK, particularly for southern catchments. The construction of storylines based on observed events can complement existing methods to stress test UK catchments against plausible unrealised droughts

Uranium nitride-silicide advanced nuclear fuel: Higher efficiency and greater safety

The development of new nuclear fuel compositions is being driven by an interest in improving efficiency/lowering cost and increasing safety margins. Nuclear fuel efficiency is in large measure a function of the atomic density of the uranium, that is, the more fissionable uranium available per unit volume the less fuel volume that is required. Proliferation concerns limit the concentration of fissile 235U, and thus attention is directed to higher overall uranium content fuel. Among the options are the high temperature phases U3Si2 and composite UN- U3Si2 where the design would have the more water-stable U3Si2 surround the more soluble, but higher uranium density UN grains. (Uranium metal of course has the highest atomic density, however its low melting point, high degree of swelling under irradiation, and chemical reactivity eliminate it from consideration.) Another advantage of the nitride and silicide phases are their high thermal conductivity, greatly exceeding the current standard UO2 fuel, with the high conductivity potentially allowing the fuel to operate at a higher power density. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Added value of seasonal hindcasts to create UK hydrological drought storylines

The UK has experienced recurring periods of hydrological droughts in the past, including the drought declared in summer 2022. Seasonal hindcasts, consisting of a large sample of plausible weather sequences, can be used to create drought storylines and add value to existing approaches to water resources planning. In this study, the drivers of winter rainfall in the Anglian region in England are investigated using the ECMWF SEAS5 hindcast dataset, which includes 2850 plausible winters across 25 ensemble members and 3 lead times. Four winter clusters are defined using the hindcast winters based on possible combinations of various atmospheric circulation indices (such as the North Atlantic Oscillation, NAO; East Atlantic, EA, pattern; and El Niño–Southern Oscillation). Using the 2022 drought as a case study, we demonstrate how storylines representing alternative ways the event could have unfolded can be used to explore plausible worst-case scenarios over winter 2022/23 and beyond. The winter clusters span a range of temperature and rainfall response in the study region and represent circulation storylines that could have happened over winter 2022/23. River flow and groundwater level simulations with the large sample of plausible hindcast winters show that drier-than-average winters characterised by predominantly NAO−/EA− and NAO+/EA− circulation patterns could have resulted in the continuation of the drought with a high likelihood of below-normal to low river flows across all selected catchments and boreholes by spring and summer 2023. Catchments in Norfolk were particularly vulnerable to a dry summer in 2023 as river flows were not estimated to recover to normal levels even with wet winters characterised predominantly by NAO−/EA+ and NAO+/EA+ circulation patterns, due to insufficient rainfall to overcome previous dry conditions and the slow response nature of groundwater-dominated catchments. Through this analysis, we aim to demonstrate the added value of this approach to create drought storylines during an ongoing event. Storylines constructed in this way supplement traditional weather forecasts and hydrological outlooks, in order to explore a wider range of plausible outcomes