Development of a Tram-Train wheel profile for dual-operation running

This paper explores the problematic interface between a Tram-Train vehicle and two very different railway infrastructures, detailing the analysis and design process required to develop an optimised wheel profile for dual operation running. One of the key issues in developing a dual-operation wheel profile is managing the contact conditions within the wheel/rail interface. The interface is critical not only to the safe running of the vehicle but also to maximise wheelset life and to minimise wheel-rail damage. A combination of vehicle dynamic simulations and bespoke software were used to allow the development of a new wheel profile for Tram-Train operations

A note on muscle composition and colour of Holstein-Friesian, Piedmontese × Holstein-Friesian and Romagnola × Holstein-Friesian steers.

peer-reviewedHolstein-Friesian (HF), Piedmontese × Holstein-Friesian (PM) and Romagnola × Holstein-Friesian (RO) steers were compared for muscle composition and colour. A total of 120 steers in a 3 breed types (HF, PM and RO) × 2 feeding levels (low and high) × 2 finishing periods (short, S and extended, E) factorial experiment were used. Three samples of m. longissimus were taken for chemical analysis, measurement of drip loss and Hunterlab colour measurements. Muscle moisture and protein concentrations were lower, and lipid concentration was higher for HF than for PM and RO, which were similar. There were no effects of feeding level on chemical composition, but after blooming all colour values except hue were lower for the higher feeding level. The E finishing period reduced moisture, protein, drip-loss, L (lightness), a (redness) and chroma values. It is concluded that PM and RO had similar muscle composition but HF had a higher lipid concentration. Feeding level had few effects on muscle composition, but extended finishing increased all measures of fatness and reduced colour values

A scheme related to the Brauer loop model

We introduce the_Brauer loop scheme_ E := {M in M_N(C) : M\cp M = 0}, where \cp is a certain degeneration of the ordinary matrix product. Its components of top dimension, floor(N^2/2), correspond to involutions \pi in S_N having one or no fixed points. In the case N even, this scheme contains the upper-upper scheme from [Knutson '04] as a union of (N/2)! of its components. One of those is a degeneration of the_commuting variety_ of pairs of commuting matrices. The_Brauer loop model_ is a quantum integrable stochastic process introduced in [de Gier--Nienhuis '04], and some of the entries of its Perron-Frobenius eigenvector were observed (conjecturally) to match the degrees of the components of the upper-upper scheme. We extend this, with proof, to_all_ the entries: they are the degrees of the components of the Brauer loop scheme. Our proof of this follows the program outlined in [Di Francesco--Zinn-Justin '04]. In that paper, the entries of the Perron-Frobenius eigenvector were generalized from numbers to polynomials, which allowed them to be calculated inductively using divided difference operators. We relate these polynomials to the multidegrees of the components of the Brauer loop scheme, defined using an evident torus action on E. In particular, we obtain a formula for the degree of the commuting variety, previously calculated up to 4x4 matrices.Comment: 31 pages, 4 figures; v2 has tiny edits and an extra circle actio

Closed Form Expression for the Momentum Radiated from Cosmic String Loops

We modify the recent analytic formula given by Allen and Casper for the rate at which piecewise linear cosmic string loops lose energy to gravitational radiation to yield the analogous analytic formula for the rate at which loops radiate momentum. The resulting formula (which is exact when the effects of gravitational back-reaction are neglected) is a sum of O(N^4) polynomial and log terms where, N is the total number of segments on the piecewise linear string loop. As illustration, we write the formula explicitly for a simple one-parameter family of loops with N=5. For most loops the large number of terms makes evaluation ``by hand" impractical, but, a computer or symbolic manipulator may by used to yield accurate results. The formula has been used to correct numerical results given in the existing literature. To assist future work in this area, a small catalog of results for a number of simple string loops is provided.Comment: 17 pages, RevTex 3.0, 3 postscript figures and C-language computer code available via anonymous ftp from directory pub/pcasper at alpha1.csd.uwm.edu, WISC-MILW-94-TH-1

Characterising submonolayer deposition via visibility graphs

We use visibility graphs as a tool to analyse the results of kinetic Monte Carlo (kMC) simulations of submonolayer deposition in a one-dimensional point island model. We introduce an efficient algorithm for the computation of the visibility graph resulting from a kMC simulation and show that from the properties of the visibility graph one can determine the critical island size, thus demonstrating that the visibility graph approach, which implicitly combines size and spatial data, can provide insights into island nucleation and growth processes