Intermittent and continuous automatic train protection

All contracts in the railway in the Industry are made in the context of English law. This paper sets out some general rules regarding English contract law. Railway contracts are often concerned with Intellectual Property rights, such as patents or copyright. The paper therefore also provides an introduction to Intellectual Property Rights.

Aims: The development of knowledge-based economy in Hong Kong requires employees with higher education level and more up-to-date knowledge. Information and communication technology (ICT) industry has been growing rapidly which is important for building a knowledge-based economy by providing higher mobility of information, more efficient communication network and sharing of knowledge between business partners. In 2002 the HKSAR Government has set up a Continuing Education Fund to encourage employees in Hong Kong to improve their education and update their knowledge by enrolling into continuing professional development courses. This policy provides opportunities to courses providers to offer continuing professional development (CPD) courses. Since these CPD courses are provided after work so the courses are conducted by part-time faculty (PTF) and there is a need to recruit part-time staff in delivering these courses. Recruitment of PTF gives course providers the benefit of meeting their teaching needs economically and flexibly but educators have often expressed concern over whether Research Article British Journal of Education, Society & Behavioural Science, 4(1): 52-73, 2014 53 the performance of PTF is in anyway affected by the absence of career development opportunities. Study Design: This study was a quantitative study which used [1] five-component commitment model to examine the effects of the perception of value of career development (VCD) on the commitment components of PTF. Place and Duration of Study: The study was taken in Hong Kong between June 2011 and June 2012. Methodology: Sample data from a population of PTF working at the 450 registered CPD course providers in Hong Kong was collected from an online questionnaire. Finally 270 set of data collated together was analyzed by factor analysis, correlation tests and multiple regression respectively. Results: The results of this study suggest that perceived VCD was affirmed to have a significantly positive influence on employee commitment, while perception of the availability of career development opportunities was found to have a moderating effect on the association between perceived VCD and employee commitment. Conclusion: This study has both theoretical and managerial implications. The examination of the complicated relationship between career development and employee commitment of PTF in Hong Kong’s CPD industry can therefore serve as a useful reference point for both academic researchers and education managers. The findings can also help CPD institutes to formulate suitable human resource strategies for attracting and retaining well-qualified practitioners to become PTF.

Over the past two decades, the pedagogical applications of corpus linguistics to language teaching have gained increased recognition. Consequently, there has been a growing interest in developing language teachers’ corpus literacy as a required knowledge base for the successful implementation of corpus-based pedagogy. Following this line of research, the current study reports on the impacts of a professional development (PD) course on six Iranian EFL teachers’ corpus literacy development. Data sources for the study included semi-structured interviews, reflective journals, and classroom observations. The findings revealed that despite some barriers for using corpora in the classroom, the PD was able to expand the teachers’ conceptual and pedagogical knowledge in relation to corpora and associated tools. Based on these findings, the study argues that for corpus-based pedagogy to become institutionalized, there is a need for embracing policies and practices that raise the awareness of teachers, teacher educators, and policymakers with respect to the affordances of corpora for informing language teaching.

Coach developers often design and deliver professional development (PD) courses for coaches that are research-based, personally tailored, and effectively taught in asynchronous online platforms. However, not all of these endeavours are successful in developing coaches. This is a confessional tale of what went wrong and why in an online PD course for adult fitness coaches, from our perspectives as the coach developers. What originally began as an action research project of a PD course on psychosocial aspects of coaching adult fitness athletes, our tale is crafted in five scenes with data from emails, reflexive diary entries, course content and analytics, and post-course interviews. We specifically examine (a) the startling consequences of content knowledge, (b) our misaligned expectations as trained and qualified CDs, (c) student-centred active learning strategies backfiring, (d) differing subjective experiences of the same online classroom, and (e) the unexplained lack of learner motivation.

This tutorial E-book is based on the long-standing experience of teaching railway operations and signalling at TU Braunschweig and other universities and higher vocational training institutions in different parts of the world. It explains the fundamental principles all railway signalling systems have in common. This is done in a generic way that does not focus on specific national solutions. It covers basic elements and terms, principles for safe train separation, interlocking principles, automatic train protection, and level crossing protection. It also contains a glossary with definitions of relevant terms.

Breastfeeding knowledge among Polish healthcare practitioners supporting breastfeeding mothers

Writing is important for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) graduate students to achieve milestones within their programs and for their future career aspirations. However, although STEM graduate students engage in a variety of academic writing activities in their time as doctoral students, writing development has not always been a focus of STEM higher education programs. We designed and implemented a 10-week, one-credit professional development course to support the academic reading and writing practices of first-year chemistry graduate students at a large R1 institution. Students end the course having completed a short independent research proposal and having received structured feedback from the department community. The course scaffolds the students’ writing, integrates collaborative activities such as peer review, and explores social connections as a salient component of not only writing practice but also the graduate school experience. We iteratively designed, implemented, and evaluated the professional development course. Here, we describe the teaching approaches and course contents used to support students’ chemistry writing process. This course may guide the creation of professional development courses to support chemistry graduate students’ writing development at other PhD-granting institutions, and it may be adapted to support academic writing across STEM disciplines.

While digital games hold promise for language learning, teachers often lack the knowledge and confidence to integrate them into their curriculum. Existing professional development opportunities are scarce and not always accessible. In this study, a mobile teacher professional development course on Digital Game-Enhanced Language Learning was designed, developed, and evaluated through three iterative cycles. The research employed a Type 1 design and development research methodology. Three groups of language instructors teaching English at the tertiary level participated in the iterative cycles. Data collection included course evaluation questionnaires, achievement tests, lesson plan development, and participant interviews. The findings indicated that the mobile teacher professional development course was effective in improving teacher perceptions of the course content, usability, and self-efficacy in integrating digital games into their teaching. The course also led to a significant increase in participants’ knowledge of Digital Game-Enhanced Language Learning concepts. Overall, the mobile teacher professional development course has the potential to be a valuable tool for equipping language teachers with the skills and confidence needed to leverage digital games in their classrooms. This is particularly relevant considering the growing need for accessible and flexible professional development opportunities, such as during a global crisis.

Although there has been substantial research in system analytics for risk assessment in traditional methods, little work has been done for safety risk prediction in communication-based train control (CBTC) system, especially intelligently predicting risk caused by the uncertainty in the system operation. Risk prediction and assessment of hazards in train control systems are vital for the safety and efficiency of urban rail transit. In this paper, we propose an intelligent hazard-risk prediction model based on a deep recurrent neural network for a new communication-mode CBTC system. First, a train-to-train communication-based train control (T2T-CBTC) system is proposed to improve the drawback of CBTC in information-exchanging mode. Then we design a risk prediction feature selection and generation method and estimate a critical function feature in the T2T-CBTC system by statistical model checking. Finally, we construct our intelligent hazard-risk prediction model based on a deep recurrent neural network using a long-short-term memory (LSTM) network. The model had excellent risk prediction classification results and performance in our experiment, even for unbalanced data set. This model consistently outperforms the deep belief network trained in Accuracy, Precision, Recall and F1-score for the hazard-risk prediction problem. Specifically, the mean accuracy is 97.2% and mean F1-score is 93.9% in overall performance of model. The improvements of our model against DBN model are 8.2% for Precision, 7% for Recall and 8% for F1-score.

Recent developments in the modern control systems show a clear trend for increasing integration of a number of safety-related electronic systems - such as railway signalling system and x-by-wire systems - that are replacing traditional mechanical controls. These applications promise improved performance and safety through continuous high-capacity realtime data exchanges and reconfiguration in abnormal situations. However, safety analysis of networked systems is becoming extraordinarily difficult because of the complexity of interactions between components and the number of possible backup modes. The traditional analysis techniques are subjective and do not facilitate reuse, thus, making the safety analysis process time-consuming and error-prone. This paper extends the failure propagation model with a set of temporal operators, in order to demonstrate more accurate representation of practical failure behaviors of networked control systems. Computation laws of temporal operators and combinatorial operators are abstracted to transform complex temporal expressions into a standard form. In this way, the models can be solved automatically. The preliminary design of Communication Based Train Control (CBTC) system for Yizhuang Line in Beijing is used to demonstrate the approach.

The article presents the issue of digital standard interfaces of railway traffic control systems. The digitization and standardization of interfaces are digital rail elements, an essential feature of integrating various devices, facilities, and processes in one coherent system. The authors described the problems of connecting computer systems, starting from the interface's definition, including technical and functional aspects. Examples of interface types selected problems resulting from connecting incompatible devices and attempts to solve them are presented. It then provides background information on the project to develop a digital interface standard for selected rail traffic control systems. The project described in this article, under the name of "Standardization of selected interfaces of railway traffic control equipment and systems" POIR.04.01.01-00-0005/17, has been created as part of the BRIK (Research and Development in Railway Infrastructure) program and has been cofinanced both by the NCBiR (The National Centre for Research and Development), as well as the PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe S.A. (PKP PLK - Polish State Railways). The project's goal is to develop, through research, specifications, and requirements for interfaces used in railway traffic control systems, which will become a standard enabling linking of systems from different manufacturers. The project results will be dedicated to using on the railway network managed by PKP PLK (and potentially also by other infrastructure managers) and documentation containing descriptions of standards, guidelines for the application and design of these interfaces.

Reliability of CTCS-3 train operation and control system is necessary to ensure train running safely and efficiently. Thus, train control system simulation should be used for lots of tests and validations. This paper is focus on the theory and period of fault injection systematically. According to characters of simulation of train control system and advantages of fault injection, application of fault injection in the field of train control system simulation is proposed for reliability test and to obtain system information after fault injection. Main structure and detailed functions, structures of fault injection system is designed and realized. This system could simulate system fault to cause rapid failure in train control system during the experiment. By analyzing the simulation result, the conclusion could be obtained that application of fault injection could help to improve reliability and fault tolerance of C3 simulation.

Communication-based train control (CBTC) systems are automated train control systems based on continuous and bidirectional train-ground communications. CBTC is the direction of future train control systems. Complex channel condition and frequent handoff can severely affect urban rail CBTC train-ground communication performance, and consequently affect CBTC operation efficiency. Current research regarding CBTC does not consider the impact of train-ground communications on train control performance. This paper studies the joint optimization of communication and control in CBTC systems. With the objective to minimize the optimal operation profile tracking error and energy consumption, linear quadratic cost is defined as the control performance measure. In order to ensure train operation safety, the optimization model puts constraints on train control actions related to safety. Moreover, based on the stochastic channel characteristics and the real-time train position information, handoff decision and train control policy are jointly optimized using deep reinforcement learning. Extensive simulation results based on real-field channel measurements illustrate that the proposed optimization method can significantly improve the train control performance in CBTC systems, and CBTC systems need to sacrifice part of performance to ensure system safety.

Utilising Research 'Praxis' to Enhance Teaching Practice in The Domain of Apprenticeship Education: A Report on a Research Capacity Building Pilot Project Run in the School Of Construction Skills

The purpose of this evaluation study was to determine whether career and technical education teachers were using the integration strategies that were presented to them in a professional development course. The integration strategies are strategies that teachers can use to integrate reading, writing and mathematics into their technical curricula. The ultimate goal of the professional development course is to help teachers improve academic achievement in career and technical education students; however, the first step in reaching this goal is to explore how teachers feel about integrating these basic academic skills into their technical subject matter and to determine whether they are using the strategies that were taught in the professional development course. A survey instrument was developed adapting Hall and Hord’s levels‐of‐use concept to show teachers’ behaviors associated with use of integration strategies in their practice. This survey was administered via the web to 100 course participants with a response of 44%. The results indicated that while teachers believed the integration strategies would increase student achievement, they were not routinely using them in their practice. The evaluators discuss potential reasons for this finding and make recommendations for improving the professional development program.