The evaluation of E-business related technologies in the Railway Industry

For the purposes of this paper, e-business is defined as: "the performance, automisation and organisation of transactions, or chains of them, and the gathering and publishing of data, electronically over a communication protocol" Little research has been conducted either into how e-business technology can be successfully evaluated, or into the associated costs and benefits specifically related to the transportation and railway industries. Based upon a review of the current literature and a series of interviews held with railway operators, track managers and transportation customers from the Australian Fortune 100, the paper puts forward a framework for the evaluation of e-business investments within the railway industry. The research reported here is aimed at developing a flexible interface that enables the decision maker to assess and evaluate a wide variety of complex interacting variables. The proposed approach uses a variety of evaluation methods, as opposed to searching for a single "best" approach. Additionally, an attempt is being made to include the complex interaction between the implementation of the new technology and the changing organisational setting. A model is proposed using fuzzy logic to handle incomplete and uncertain knowledge; as well as to combine criteria within a conceptual model from which "real-worth" evaluations can be performed. This model provides a systematic approach to guide the decision maker in the deployment of e-business and emerging technologies in the industry. After discussing the main findings from a literature review on the use of evaluation frameworks in IT related projects, the paper deals with the proposed framework in detail. The use of empirical data, which was obtained transportation customers to help define the main framework factors, is also discussed. Finally, the paper summarises the main implications for rail freight of customers’s perceptions and stated needs in the e-business domain

Identifying Key Sectors in the Regional Economy: A Network Analysis Approach Using Input-Output Data

By applying network analysis techniques to large input-output system, we identify key sectors in the local/regional economy. We overcome the limitations of traditional measures of centrality by using random-walk based measures, as an extension of Blochl et al. (2011). These are more appropriate to analyze very dense networks, i.e. those in which most nodes are connected to all other nodes. These measures also allow for the presence of recursive ties (loops), since these are common in economic systems (depending to the level of aggregation, most firms buy from and sell to other firms in the same industrial sector). The centrality measures we present are well suited for capturing sectoral effects missing from the usual output and employment multipliers. We also develop an R package (xtranat) for the processing of data from IMPLAN(R) models and for computing the newly developed measures

The Translation of Indonesian Reduplication Into English

Every language has its own way to communicate its expression. Indonesian has reduplication such as pagi-pagi, cantik-cantik, and jalan-jalan. The English translation of this reduplication is not *morning-morning, *beautiful-beautiful, and*walking-walking respectively. In this case, the translators should make an adjustment when they transfer the message of the Indonesian reduplication into English. This study investigates how Indonesian university students, teachers, and professionals translate the Indonesian reduplications into English. It explores the meaning and structure resulted from the translation. The participants are university students, lecturers and employees. They are given questionnaires in which they translate the Indonesian reduplication into English. The analysis involves the morphological, syntactic and semantic aspects of the translation, as well as the deviations that possibly occur in the translation

Bargaining Multiple Issues with Leximin Preferences

Global bargaining problems over a finite number of different issues, are formalized as cartesian products of classical bargaining problems. For maximin and leximin bargainers we characterize global bargaining solutions that are efficient and satisfy the requirement that bargaining separately or globally leads to equivalent outcomes. Global solutions in this class are constructed from the family of monotone path solutions for classical bargaining problems.Global bargaining, maximin preferences, leximin preferences

Mass entrainment rate of an ideal momentum turbulent round jet

We propose a two-phase-fluid model for a full-cone turbulent round jet that describes its dynamics in a simple but comprehensive manner with only the apex angle of the cone being a disposable parameter. The basic assumptions are that (i) the jet is statistically stationary and that (ii) it can be approximated by a mixture of two fluids with their phases in dynamic equilibrium. To derive the model, we impose conservation of the initial volume and total momentum fluxes. Our model equations admit analytical solutions for the composite density and velocity of the two-phase fluid, both as functions of the distance from the nozzle, from which the dynamic pressure and the mass entrainment rate are calculated. Assuming a far-field approximation, we theoretically derive a constant entrainment rate coefficient solely in terms of the cone angle. Moreover, we carry out experiments for a single-phase turbulent air jet and show that the predictions of our model compare well with this and other experimental data of atomizing liquid jets.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figure

Perfect (super) Edge-Magic Crowns

A graph G is called edge-magic if there is a bijective function f from the set of vertices and edges to the set {1,2,…,|V(G)|+|E(G)|} such that the sum f(x)+f(xy)+f(y) for any xy in E(G) is constant. Such a function is called an edge-magic labelling of G and the constant is called the valence. An edge-magic labelling with the extra property that f(V(G))={1,2,…,|V(G)|} is called super edge-magic. A graph is called perfect (super) edge-magic if all theoretical (super) edge-magic valences are possible. In this paper we continue the study of the valences for (super) edge-magic labelings of crowns Cm¿K¯¯¯¯¯n and we prove that the crowns are perfect (super) edge-magic when m=pq where p and q are different odd primes. We also provide a lower bound for the number of different valences of Cm¿K¯¯¯¯¯n, in terms of the prime factors of m.Postprint (updated version