Long-distance bus services in Europe: Concessions or free market?

This paper makes a review of the current situation in the interurban passenger transport market by coach in Europe, describing for a number of selected countries the regulatory setting, the main market actors, the main developments have taken place in the last decade or two and a number of resulting challenges, especially in terms of regulation. The paper starts with a chapter on country cases. The next chapter summarises the main facts and trends that appear out of this review. The last chapter draws a few conclusions

Experts’ inventory and rating of core performance indicators and organisational features in public transport: a global Delphi survey

Discussions involving the connection between organisational form and performance in public transport systems take place for over a century and remain at the top of the agenda in the sector. These analyses indicate that some organisational elements might be important for success in public transport. However, studies usually focus on the impacts of a single policy initiative and results are seldom clear. The analysis of the relationship organisation-performance can benefit from a more comprehensive approach that does not treat variables only in an isolated and incremental fashion, but instead considers performance outcomes as the result of the combined effect of different organisational variables. A first step to allow this broader approach is to get the variables right: What organisational features drive strategic performance outcomes, and what performance metrics are more suitable to measure these impacts? A Delphi survey is developed and, based on experts’ judgement, builds authoritative lists of core performance indicators and organisational features. User Satisfaction and Policy Integration between Public Transport and other government areas emerge, respectively, as highest rated variables.Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies. Faculty of Economics and Business. The University of Sydne

Development of railway contracting for the national passenger rail services in the Netherlands

This article mainly gives an overview of the policy developments in the Dutch railway sector over the past decade. The sector has come a long way and the outlook now looks positive. Customer satisfaction and performance have improved and the number of people that travel by train is rising. The development of a more long-term policy window for the sector seems to have brought rest and stability and room for continuous growth of passenger numbers. The combination of a policy making and negotiation regulatory style seems to have worked out very well on the performance of the sector. In a second section the paper also considers a theoretical framework on regulation schemes and develops a first tentative attempt to apply these schemes on an analysis of the Dutch railway sector by giving some statements for discussion.Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies. Faculty of Economics and Business. The University of Sydne

Competitive Tendering In The Netherlands: Central Planning Or Functional Specifications?

Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies. Faculty of Economics and Business. The University of Sydne

The Evolution Of Tactical Tendering In The Netherlands

Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies. Faculty of Economics and Business. The University of Sydne

Protection of Sinorhizobium against Host Cysteine-Rich Antimicrobial Peptides Is Critical for Symbiosis

A bacterial membrane protein, BacA, protects Sinorhizobium meliloti against the antimicrobial activity of host peptides, enabling the peptides to induce bacterial persistence rather than bacterial death

Reception Test of Petals for the End Cap TEC+ of the CMS Silicon Strip Tracker

The silicon strip tracker of the CMS experiment has been completed and was inserted into the CMS detector in late 2007. The largest sub system of the tracker are its end caps, comprising two large end caps (TEC) each containing 3200 silicon strip modules. To ease construction, the end caps feature a modular design: groups of about 20 silicon modules are placed on sub-assemblies called petals and these self-contained elements are then mounted onto the TEC support structures. Each end cap consists of 144 such petals, which were built and fully qualified by several institutes across Europe. Fro

Integration of the End Cap TEC+ of the CMS Silicon Strip Tracker

The silicon strip tracker of the CMS experiment has been completed and inserted into the CMS detector in late 2007. The largest sub-system of the tracker is its end cap system, comprising two large end caps (TEC) each containing 3200 silicon strip modules. To ease construction, the end caps feature a modular design: groups of about 20 silicon modules are placed on sub-assemblies called petals and these self-contained elements are then mounted into the TEC support structures. Each end cap consists of 144 petals, and the insertion of these petals into the end cap structure is referred to as TEC integration. The two end caps were integrated independently in Aachen (TEC+) and at CERN (TEC--). This note deals with the integration of TEC+, describing procedures for end cap integration and for quality control during testing of integrated sections of the end cap and presenting results from the testing

(Homo)glutathione Deficiency Impairs Root-knot Nematode Development in Medicago truncatula

Root-knot nematodes (RKN) are obligatory plant parasitic worms that establish and maintain an intimate relationship with their host plants. During a compatible interaction, RKN induce the redifferentiation of root cells into multinucleate and hypertrophied giant cells essential for nematode growth and reproduction. These metabolically active feeding cells constitute the exclusive source of nutrients for the nematode. Detailed analysis of glutathione (GSH) and homoglutathione (hGSH) metabolism demonstrated the importance of these compounds for the success of nematode infection in Medicago truncatula. We reported quantification of GSH and hGSH and gene expression analysis showing that (h)GSH metabolism in neoformed gall organs differs from that in uninfected roots. Depletion of (h)GSH content impaired nematode egg mass formation and modified the sex ratio. In addition, gene expression and metabolomic analyses showed a substantial modification of starch and γ-aminobutyrate metabolism and of malate and glucose content in (h)GSH-depleted galls. Interestingly, these modifications did not occur in (h)GSH-depleted roots. These various results suggest that (h)GSH have a key role in the regulation of giant cell metabolism. The discovery of these specific plant regulatory elements could lead to the development of new pest management strategies against nematodes

Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016