An Adaptive Conjoint Analysis of Freight Service Alternatives: Evaluating the Maritime Alternative

The growing interest towards a re-balancing of freight traffic over the different modes, has brought renewed focus on the "Motorways of the sea" as they have been defined by the EU Commission in the recently issued White paper (2001). These could constitute a valid alternative to land transport over medium-long distance, favouring, at the same time, a greater integration among different modes. However, the great potential of this alternative - which is increasingly capturing the interest of policymakers - should be evaluated also in the light of the level of competitiveness nowadays required by the operators. The latter, in fact, need a flexible transport system capable of adapting to the modern system of production and completely integrated within the logistics networks (both existing and under construction). Furthermore, in order to effectively promote the use of this alternative, it is necessary to undertake a number of initiatives directed mainly at reducing the bottlenecks currently present within the ports and in the links between ports and their interland. In determining the necessary investments in intermodal sea-land infrastructures it is essential to evaluate the dimension and the extent of the potential re-orientation of traffic flows towards maritime transport which would yield insight on the appropriate/optimal dimension of such investments. In order to achieve this, it would be essential to have a set of information not only on the current movements but also on their potential reallocation. An estimation of the latter cannot be achieved without an in-depth analysis of shippers behaviour. However, while in the last year a number of documents have been put forward on the great opportunities offered by the development of the "Motorways of the sea" in re-directing freight flows, there is a lack of any empirical analysis on the determinants of such choice by operators. In other words, a lot has been done in analysing supply while very little in analysing demand. In this work we aim to identify the value that the user assigns to the specific transport alternative and the factors - related to both the mode and the specific organisation of the companies - that exert a significant influence on the choice of the shipper. These elements represent a necessary prerequisite for any previsions. The methodology used falls within the definition of conjoint Analysis. We will measure the trade-offs users of freight transport services make in choosing between alternative modes. We will also use the result to predict their choices with regards to alternatives which, at the moment might not be present, but which might be placed on the market. The assumption we make, following the approach of Bolis and Maggi (1999) and Fowkes and Tweddle (1996), is that the transport service can be ?broken down? into its component attributes. As it is well known, conjoint analysis allows to determine the value that individuals place on any product as equivalent to the sum of the utility they derive from all the attributes making up a product. In particular, given the successful applications to land transport, we use "Adaptive Stated Preferences" (ASP) techniques adjusted in order to carry out the analysis of freight transport demand in the maritime context. We aim to evaluate the preferences of operators in terms of service attributes of sea transport. Given the purposes of this study, for the moment we focus the empirical application on a specific geographical context. In particular, we analyse the preferences of operators localised in the north-west regions of Italy with respect to the possibility of accessing a maritime ro-ro service from the ports of Genoa or La Spezia. The analysis is carried out in two phases: a postal survey and a subsequent direct interview. The latter is done creating a ?transport experiment? and recording the behaviour and the choices of the interviewed. Following this approach, we obtain an accurate estimation of operators? willingness to pay for the specific service characteristics (hard output) and we induce them to reveal the rank of their preferences for a set of potential new services (soft output). In the first part of the paper we give details of the specific transport options we are considering and we describe the project carried out, in the second part we illustrate the methodology used the and the necessary modification we have had to carry out in order to implement the study in a maritime context. In the third part we discuss the data collection process and we carry out a preliminary data analysis, while, in the fourth section, we present the results of the econometric model (logit model) used to analyse the data and we give some interpretation. Finally, in the last section, we present some concluding remarks.

Physics-based large-signal sensitivity analysis of microwave circuits using technological parametric sensitivity from multidimensional semiconductor device models

The authors present an efficient approach to evaluate the large-signal (LS) parametric sensitivity of active semiconductor devices under quasi-periodic operation through accurate, multidimensional physics-based models. The proposed technique exploits efficient intermediate mathematical models to perform the link between physics-based analysis and circuit-oriented simulations, and only requires the evaluation of dc and ac small-signal (dc charge) sensitivities under general quasi-static conditions. To illustrate the technique, the authors discuss examples of sensitivity evaluation, statistical analysis, and doping profile optimization of an implanted MESFET to minimize intermodulation which makes use of LS parametric sensitivities under two-tone excitatio

Urgensi Pengaturan Ekspresi Budaya (Folklore) Masyarakat Adat

Perlindungan hukum terhadap ekspresi budaya tradisional (folklore) dalam Pasal 10 Undang-Undang Nomor 19 tahun 2002 Tentang Hak Cipta sangat tidak memadai. Penyebabnya adalah adanya pertentangan filosofi dalam hak cipta yang berkonsep individual dengan filosofi ekspresi budaya tradisional (folklore) yang berkonsep komunal. Hal ini menimbulkan tingginya pelanggaran pihak asing terhadap karya ekspresi budaya tradisional (folklore) masyarakat adat. Sehingga timbul pertanyaan “perlindungan hukum bagaimana yang tepat untuk melindungi karya ekspresi budaya tradisional (folklore) masyarakat adat di Indonesia. Berdasarkan ketentuan Pasal 8 huruf (J) Convention on Biological Diversity yang selanjutnya disingkat CBD, meperkenalkan sistem sui generis yang memberikan peluang bagi negara yang memiliki kekayaan ekspresi budaya tradisional (folklore) untuk mengatur perlindungan ekspresi budaya tradisional (folklore) sesuai dengan kepentingan negara masing-masing termasuk Indonesia. Oleh karena itu, lahirnya peraturam hukum yang khusus dalam melindungi ekspresi budaya tradisional (folklore), merupakan kebutuhan yang mendesak. Selain itu, dengan adanya peraturan tersebut, maka pihak asing dapat memanfaatkan ekspresi budaya tradisional (folklore) Indonesia secara legal dan juga Pemerintah dapat memperoleh manfaat ekonomi dari penggunaan ekspresi budaya tradisional (folklore) tersebut. Selain itu, langkah awal yang harus dilakukan Pemerintah adalah melakukan pendataan karya ekspresi budaya tradisional (folklore) di seluruh wilayah Indonesia, agar dapat dijadikan sebagai alat bukti terhadap pihak asing apabila terjadi pelanggaran

Potret Efektivitas Penerapan Undang-undang No. 19 Tahun 2002 Tentang Hak Cipta

Di era globalisasi yang berlandaskan pada pasar bebas membawa pengaruh yang cukup besar bagi tatanan kehidupan masyarakat.nPerubahan terjadi di semua aspek kehidupan termasuk aspek hukum. Salah satunya terjadi Perubahan UUHC 2002 agar mendukung pasar bebas. Selama ini penerapan perlindungan hak cipta mengalami berbagai kendala. Oleh karenanya permasalahanya: apakah penerapan UUHC2002 telah cukup efektif dalam melindungi pencipta ataupun pemegang hak cipta atas karya yang dihasilkannya? Untuk mengkaji efektivitas penerapan suatu UUHC 2002 digunakan teori sistem hukum dari Freidman yang terdiri dari sub sistem substansi, sub sistem struktur dan sub system budaya hukum. Berkaitan dengan sub sistem substansi mengantisipasi kelemahan UUHC 2002, maka Pemerintah mengeluarkan RUU Hak Cipta, yang saat ini sedang dibahas di Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat. Dalam RUU Hak Cipta ada beberapa revisi yang dapat meningkatkan efektivitas penerannya, diantaranya pada Pasal 2 RUU Hak Cipta lebih mendalam dalam memaparkan tentang Hak Cipta, selanjutnya telah diatur dalam Pasal 17 RUU Hak Cipta mengenai karya yang tidak dilindungi hak cipta. Selain itu, istilah folklore dalam Pasal 10 ayat 2 UUHC telah diubah dengan istilah ekspresi budaya tradisional dalam RUU Hak Cipta. Namun, ruang lingkupnya masih tetap sama. Selanjutnya dalam Pasal 14 ayat (1) dan ayat (2) RUU Hak Cipta, adanya pengaturan ekspresi budaya tradisional harus mengemban kepentingan masyarakat yang tidak boleh mengesampingkan nilai-nilai yang berlaku di masyarakat. Perubahan yang secara signifikatn mengalami perbedaan adalah pada Pasal 67 RUU Hak Cipta mengenai hak pelaku telah diatur secara lebih rinci.Berkaitan dengan sub struktur telah ada Dirjen Hak Kekayaan Intelektual dan Tim Nasional untuk menanggulangi Pelanggaran HKI, dalam dalam RUU Hak Cipta juga direncanakan Lembaga Manajeman Kolektif Nasional. Namun, pada sub budaya hukum masih memiliki banyak kendala, karena masyarakat belum mampu menghargai karya cipta orang lain. Budaya hukum masyarakat mengeristal menjadi kesadaran hukum. Untuk meningkatkan kesadaran hukum masyarakat masih membutuhkan perjalanan yang panjang. Oleh karenanya, untuk meningkatkan efektivitas perlindungan hak cipta membutuhkan peraturan pelaksana undang-undang hak cipta selain meningkatkan kesadaran hukum masyarakat tentang pentingnya hak cipta melalui sosialisasi dan pendidikan hukum

Inter-Firm Co-Operative Strategies In The Context Of Discontinuous Technological Change. The Case Of The Uk Optical Communications Systems Industry

At times of discontinuous technological change co-operation represents a viable strategy for both incumbents and new-entrants, provided that the choice of co-operation is consistent with the firm's business strategy (market-pull vs. technology-push) and with its degree of organizational and technological flexibility. Evidence from the UK fibre-optics industry identifies two ideal-types of co-operation, namely structured co-operation - associated with market-pull strategies and lower levels of flexibility - and unstructured co-operation - associated with technology-push strategies and higher levels of flexibility

Understanding the determinants of stability and folding of small globular proteins from their energetics

The results of minimal model calculations suggest that the stability and the kinetic accessibility of the native state of small globular proteins are controlled by few "hot" sites. By mean of molecular dynamics simulations around the native conformation, which simulate the protein and the surrounding solvent at full--atom level, we generate an energetic map of the equilibrium state of the protein and simplify it with an Eigenvalue decomposition. The components of the Eigenvector associated with the lowest Eigenvalue indicate which are the "hot" sites responsible for the stability and for the fast folding of the protein. Comparison of these predictions with the results of mutatgenesis experiments, performed for five small proteins, provide an excellent agreement

On Graph Refutation for Relational Inclusions

We introduce a graphical refutation calculus for relational inclusions: it reduces establishing a relational inclusion to establishing that a graph constructed from it has empty extension. This sound and complete calculus is conceptually simpler and easier to use than the usual ones.Comment: In Proceedings LSFA 2011, arXiv:1203.542

SMAUG: a new technique for the deprojection of galaxy clusters

This paper presents a new technique for reconstructing the spatial distributions of hydrogen, temperature and metal abundance of a galaxy cluster. These quantities are worked out from the X-ray spectrum, modeled starting from few analytical functions describing their spatial distributions. These functions depend upon some parameters, determined by fitting the model to the observed spectrum. We have implemented this technique as a new model in the XSPEC software analysis package. We describe the details of the method, and apply it to work out the structure of the cluster A1795. We combine the observation of three satellites, exploiting the high spatial resolution of Chandra for the cluster core, the wide collecting area of XMM-Newton for the intermediate regions and the large field of view of Beppo-SAX for the outer regions. We also test the validity and precision of our method by i) comparing its results with those from a geometrical deprojection, ii) examining the spectral residuals at different radii of the cluster and iii) reprojecting the unfolded profiles and comparing them directly to the measured quantities. Our analytical method yields the parameters defining the spatial functions directly from the spectra. Their explicit knowledge allows a straightforward derivation of other indirect physical quantities like the gravitating mass, as well as a fast and easy estimate of the profiles uncertainties.Comment: 24 pages, 11 figures, 3 tables; emulateapj; accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Fine frequency shift of sigle vortex entrance and exit in superconducting loops

The heat capacity $C_{p}$ of an array of independent aluminum rings has been measured under an external magnetic field $\vec{H}$ using highly sensitive ac-calorimetry based on a silicon membrane sensor. Each superconducting vortex entrance induces a phase transition and a heat capacity jump and hence $C_{p}$ oscillates with $\vec{H}$. This oscillatory and non-stationary behaviour measured versus the magnetic field has been studied using the Wigner-Ville distribution (a time-frequency representation). It is found that the periodicity of the heat capacity oscillations varies significantly with the magnetic field; the evolution of the period also depends on the sweeping direction of the field. This can be attributed to a different behavior between expulsion and penetration of vortices into the rings. A variation of more than 15% of the periodicity of the heat capacity jumps is observed as the magnetic field is varied. A description of this phenomenon is given using an analytical solution of the Ginzburg-Landau equations of superconductivity

Repeated or intermittent levosimendan treatment in advanced heart failure: An updated meta-analysis.

Abstract Introduction Advanced heart failure is a malignant disease characterized by a debilitating late course, with increasingly frequent hospitalisations and high rate of mortality. Levosimendan, an inodilator developed for the treatment of acutely decompensated chronic heart failure, has been recently proposed also as a repetitive treatment of advanced heart failure. Several studies on the use of levosimendan in this settings report mortality data. Independent meta-analyses on the effect on mortality of repetitive or intermittent levosimendan administration in advanced heart failure has been published but were criticized in regard to the selection of the studies. Meanwhile new data became available. We therefore updated the selection of studies and re-analyzed all the available data. Methods & results Data from seven randomized trial and a total of 438 adult patients using intermittent levosimendan in a cardiological setting were included in the present analysis. The average follow-up period was 8±3.8months. The use of levosimendan was associated with a significant reduction in mortality at the longest follow-up available [41 of 257 (16%) in the levosimendan group vs. 39 of 181 (21.5%) in the control arm, OR=0.54 (95% CI 0.32–0.91), p for effect=0.02, p for heterogeneity=0.64, I2=0%]. Conclusions The updated results suggest that repetitive or intermittent levosimendan administration in advanced heart failure is associated with a significant reduction in mortality at the longest follow-up available. There is therefore a strong rationale for a randomized clinical trial with adequate power on mortality