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The vibration of the rails is a significant source of railway rolling noise, often forming the dominant component of noise in the important frequency region between 400 and 2000 Hz. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the influence of the ground profile and the presence of the train body on the sound radiation from the rail.

Two-dimensional boundary element calculations are used, in which the rail vibration is the source. The ground profile and various different shapes of train body are introduced in the model, and results are observed in terms of sound power and sound pressure. Comparisons are also made with vibro-acoustic measurements performed with and without a train present.

The sound radiated by the rail in the absence of the train body is strongly attenuated by shielding due to the ballast shoulder. When the train body is present, the sound from the vertical rail motion is reflected back down toward the track where it is partly absorbed by the ballast. Nevertheless, the sound pressure at the trackside is increased by typically 0–5 dB. For the lateral vibration of the rail, the effects are much smaller. Once the sound power is known, the sound pressure with the train present can be approximated reasonably well with simple line source directivities.

Numerical models used to predict the sound radiation from railway rails have generally neglected the influence of the ground profile and reflections from the underside of the train body on the sound power and directivity of the rail. These effects are studied in a systematic way including comparisons with measurements.

The purpose of this paper is to use Bates’ paper as a springboard to consider the potential impact of the internet on the personal and intimate lives of people with learning disabilities including opportunities to gain support.

Key literature is reviewed alongside the author’s experiences in working with people with learning disabilities on sexual issues.

The literature prioritises internet safety for people with learning disabilities. There is limited attention to how people can be supported to use social media to enhance their social and/or sexual lives.

The commentary challenges the reader to consider how the internet and social media can be used to help people with learning disabilities develop and maintain relationships including sexual relationships.

The democratic political product is complex and untangible. An underlying assumption of a democratic system is the involvement of voters, or consumers, but with contemporary political apathy this aspect is relatively unacknowledged. This paper aims to explore the role of the consumer in political branding.

Two contrasting case studies compare the balance between the corporate brand of the political party and the brand image of two different kinds of local politician. Aaker's “Brand Equity Ten” is adapted to provide a suitable conceptual framework for the case study comparison.

Investigating the interaction between the community and politicians drew out important implications for the political brand. The paper concludes that managing the political brand entails a recognition of the inherent duality that resides in the political product. In an environment of reduced differentiation of political offerings to the electoral marketplace it is important for politicians and the political party to make early decisions about which aspect of this brand duality best serves individual careers and the party. Key to this decision is the opinion‐leading role of politically aware consumers.

This research shows that an individual politician's brand can compete with or enhance the corporate political party brand, which implies that political branding must take into account the communication role of the highly involved consumer.

This paper examines the under‐researched area of consumer contribution to political branding. The role of highly involved political consumers in constituency politics is clearly shown to affect the politician's brand equity. This leads to a re‐conceptualisation of the politician's brand vis‐à‐vis the political party brand.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a practical framework that health care organizations could use to decrease preventable healthcare-acquired harms.

An existing theory of how hospitals succeeded in reducing rates of central line-associated bloodstream infections was refined, drawing from the literature and experiences in facilitating improvement efforts in thousands of hospitals in and outside the USA.

The following common interventions were implemented by hospitals able to reduce and sustain low infection rates. Hospital and intensive care unit (ICU) leaders demonstrated and vocalized their commitment to the goal of zero preventable harm. Also, leaders created an enabling infrastructure in the way of a coordinating team to support the improvement work to prevent infections. The team of hospital quality improvement and infection prevention staff provided project management, analytics, improvement science support, and expertise on evidence-based infection prevention practices. A third intervention assembled Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program teams in ICUs to foster local ownership of the improvement work. The coordinating team also linked unit-based safety teams in and across hospital organizations to form clinical communities to share information and disseminate effective solutions.

This framework is a feasible approach to drive local efforts to reduce bloodstream infections and other preventable healthcare-acquired harms.

Implementing this framework could decrease the significant morbidity, mortality, and costs associated with preventable harms.

In the traditional executive suite, the chief financial officer’s (CFO’s) role was to keep tabs on the money and then make sense of that information for the board of directors, top management, and the investment community. And while the CFO’s fiefdom was large, few ventured beyond these purely financial domains. But times have changed. Today, CFOs must take on dynamic leadership roles in four important areas of the business. First, they have exemplary strategic management capabilities. Second, they are able to provide line management with detailed, real‐time information that improves the quality of strategic decision‐making and execution. Third, they transform the traditional investor‐relations function into a source of competitive advantage. And fourth, their leadership transcends the finance function and carries over into all areas of the company.

Sex has increasingly been constructed as a problem for men with learning disabilities. Research has focused on their vulnerability to abuse and their capacity to exploit. There are also the additional fears of their sexual activity leading to HIV infection or pregnancy. Notions of sexual rights and sexual pleasure are lost in such a discourse. This paper looks in detail at the actual experience of sex for men with learning disabilities, based on qualitative interviews. It paints a very uncomfortable picture, leading to the title question: is sex a good thing for men with learning disabilities?

The public’s awareness of noise and vibration forms a significant barrier to further development of railways. This chapter begins with a short introduction to the main fundamental aspects of acoustics, including decibels, frequency analysis, the propagation of sound with distance and common measurement quantities. The main sources of railway noise are discussed, including rolling noise, impact noise, curve squeal and aerodynamic noise. Simple calculation procedures are described that can be used to assess the impact of railway noise and to compare it with legal limits. The final section is devoted to ground vibration, which is a related form of environmental disturbance.

This case replaces UVA-M-0837. It can be used in a variety of marketing and strategy classes to understand how (1) at a macro level, a shift in consumer and environmental factors can impact firm strategy and (2) at a micro level, an e-mail-based marketing campaign designed to address these changes can impact firm-level performance.

The case puts the students in the position of CEO Robert Huth as he is preparing for a board meeting. He had taken David's Bridal from a loss in 1996 to sales of over $1 billion by 2011, but he was concerned about future growth. People were waiting longer and longer to get married and, once they decided to, were spending much less than in the past, so the industry had seen year-over-year declines since 2007. How would David's Bridal establish its brand in the minds of a new generation of brides who shopped, purchased, and decided differently than had brides in past generations?