Railway Reform in China.

The purpose of this working paper is to consider the current situation of Chinese Railways, the progress of reforms to date, and possible future developments. The first section describes the current problems of Chinese Railways, as a vast organisation subject to strong central control, facing enormous and rapidly growing demands which it is unable to satisfy. The progress of reform in Chinese Railways to date, and in particular the Economic Contract Responsibility System instituted in the late 1980's and the development of joint venture companies to build new lines, are then described. In the following section the key reform models found in other countries - deregulation and privatisation of vertically integrated regional companies; separation of infrastructure from operations with open access andlor franchising competitors; or reorganisation on the basis of business sectors - are then described. None is fully suitable for China, but it is suggested that a combination of sectorisation, more commercial independence, further development of joint public/private partnerships and more contracting out, is the most likely way forward

High Dynamic Range RF Front End with Noise Cancellation and Linearization for WiMAX Receivers

This research deals with verification of the high dynamic range for a heterodyne radio frequency (RF) front end. A 2.6 GHz RF front end is designed and implemented in a hybrid microwave integrated circuit (HMIC) for worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) receivers. The heterodyne RF front end consists of a low-noise amplifier (LNA) with noise cancellation, an RF bandpass filter (BPF), a downconverter with linearization, and an intermediate frequency (IF) BPF. A noise canceling technique used in the low-noise amplifier eliminates a thermal noise and then reduces the noise figure (NF) of the RF front end by 0.9 dB. Use of a downconverter with diode linearizer also compensates for gain compression, which increases the input-referred third-order intercept point (IIP3) of the RF front end by 4.3 dB. The proposed method substantially increases the spurious-free dynamic range (DRf) of the RF front end by 3.5 dB

Construction of optimal multi-level supersaturated designs

A supersaturated design is a design whose run size is not large enough for estimating all the main effects. The goodness of multi-level supersaturated designs can be judged by the generalized minimum aberration criterion proposed by Xu and Wu [Ann. Statist. 29 (2001) 1066--1077]. A new lower bound is derived and general construction methods are proposed for multi-level supersaturated designs. Inspired by the Addelman--Kempthorne construction of orthogonal arrays, several classes of optimal multi-level supersaturated designs are given in explicit form: Columns are labeled with linear or quadratic polynomials and rows are points over a finite field. Additive characters are used to study the properties of resulting designs. Some small optimal supersaturated designs of 3, 4 and 5 levels are listed with their properties.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009053605000000688 in the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

SPARKPLUS for Self- and Peer Assessment on Group-Based Honours’ Research Projects

This paper explores an application of an online tool SPARKPLUS (Self and Peer Assessment Resource Kit) for the self and peer assessment on the group-based Honours’ research projects. The Honours’ research projects in School of Civil, Environmental Engineering at University of Adelaide are running in a small group of students (typically four students or less) working with an academic supervisor in a selected area for one year. Since the research project is self-directed study, it is very difficult to fairly assess the contribution of individual students to the group-based research project. The paper-based method of self and peer assessment for the Honour’s research projects was used in the previous years. The same mark was often distributed and no feedback was given. Both the students and academic staff were not satisfied with the paper-based method of self and peer assessment. Thus an online tool SPARK PLUS together with a set of assessment criteria was used for the self and peer assessment of the Honours’ research projects in 2010. Thirty-seven groups participated in the self and peer assessment of using SPARK PLUS in semester one 2010 and a series of results from the online self and peer assessment were obtained and analysed. Feedback sessions were held and substantial feedback was received from students. Based on the feedback, suggestions were made on improving use of the online tool for self and peer assessment on the Honours’ research project.Chengqing Wu, Emmanuel Chanda and John Willisonhttp://www.adelaide.edu.au/erg

Creep recovery and stress relaxation tests of 6061-0 aluminum

The investigation of creep recovery and stress relaxation in aluminum using a closed loop servo-hydraulic test system is described. The practicality of a computer controlled test system for constant plastic strain rate tension tests is demonstrated. The plastic strain rate and the magnitude of the initial strain are shown to have a noticeable effect on subsequent creep behavior of aluminum

A 0.8 V T Network-Based 2.6 GHz Downconverter RFIC

A 2.6 GHz downconverter RFIC is designed and implemented using a 0.18 μm CMOS standard process. An important goal of the design is to achieve the high linearity that is required in WiMAX systems with a low supply voltage. A passive T phase-shift network is used as an RF input stage in a Gilbert cell to reduce supply voltage. A single supply voltage of 0.8 V is used with a power consumption of 5.87 mW. The T network-based downconverter achieves a conversion gain (CG) of 5 dB, a single-sideband noise figure (NF) of 16.16 dB, an RF-to-IF isolation of greater than 20 dB, and an input-referred third-order intercept point (IIP3) of 1 dBm when the LO power of -13 dBm is applied

Enhanced backscatter of optical beams reflected in turbulent air

Optical beams propagating through air acquire phase distortions from turbulent fluctuations in the refractive index. While these distortions are usually deleterious to propagation, beams reflected in a turbulent medium can undergo a local recovery of spatial coherence and intensity enhancement referred to as enhanced backscatter (EBS). Using a combination of lab-scale experiments and simulations, we investigate the EBS of optical beams reflected from corner cubes and rough surfaces, and identify the regimes in which EBS is most distinctly observed.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure

Precise near-earth navigation with GPS: A survey of techniques

The tracking accuracy of the low earth orbiters (below about 3000 km altitude) can be brought below 10 cm with a variety of differential techniques that exploit the Global Positioning System (GPS). All of these techniques require a precisely known global network of GPS ground receivers and a receiver aboard the user satellite, and all simultaneously estimate the user and GPS satellite orbits. Three basic approaches are the geometric, dynamic, and nondynamic strategies. The last combines dynamic GPS solutions with a geometric user solution. Two powerful extensions of the nondynamic strategy show considerable promise. The first uses an optimized synthesis of dynamics and geometry in the user solution, while the second uses a novel gravity-adjustment method to exploit data from repeat ground tracks. These techniques will offer sub-decimeter accuracy for dynamically unpredictable satellites down to the lowesst possible altitudes