1,720,975 research outputs found
Using the PUMA test to predict performance of stabilised ballasted trackbed
The main functions of ballast are to provide structural support to the rail superstructure and fast drainage. Ballast performance degrades during its service life due to deterioration caused by dynamic loads from passing trains and by environmental weathering, and eventually it becomes fouled. The structural integrity of fouled ballast can be compromised leading to track instability and accelerating geometry deterioration. Moreover the constant increase in volume, tonnage and speed on the rail system stresses the trackbed to levels never experienced before; thus in order to keep the stability and geometry of the track at standard comfort and safety levels, ever more frequent maintenance is needed, both ordinary (tamping) and extraordinary (renewal). Ballast maintenance costs are a great part of the maintenance costs and material consumption; therefore new methods of trackbed maintenance must be adopted to enhance performance and in turn durability of the infrastructure.
The study, presented in this paper, investigates the potential for in-situ stabilisation of the ballast layer by providing it with bonding strength through the addition of a bitumen emulsion that acts at ambient temperature. The resulting bituminous mixture was tested by means of vertical cyclic compression to account for accumulated vertical deformation by means of the precision unbound material analyser test, developed partly at the University of Nottingham, by applying a dynamic load simulating traffic conditions. The results show that this equipment is a reliable, economical, repeatable and relatively simple solution to perform accelerated simulative tests of railway trackbed technologies
Toward the Development of Load Transfer Efficiency Evaluation of Rigid Pavements by a Rolling Wheel Deflectometer
The jointed rigid pavement is currently evaluated by the Falling weight deflectometer which is rather slow for the testing of the jointed pavements. Continuous nondestructive evaluation of rigid pavements with a rolling wheel deflectometer can be used to measure the load transfer and is investigated. Load transfer is an important indicator of the rigid pavement’s condition and this is the primary factor which is studied. Continuous data from experimental measurements across a joint allows for the determination of not only the load transfer efficiency provided parameters characterizing the pavement is known. A three-dimensional semi-analytical model was implemented for simulating the pavement response near a joint and used for interpretation and verification of the experimental data. Results show that this development is promising for the use of a rolling wheel deflectometer for rapid evaluation of joints
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
We have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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