Bus fleet data have consistently shown that vehicle operating and maintenance costs increase as vehicles age. A fleet manager has to deal with the tradeoff between the lower operating and maintenance costs of newer fleets and their higher initial capital costs as well as the tradeoff between conventional and fuel efficient bus technologies. This study formulates and implements a fleet replaceme...

The fluorescent treponemal antibody absorption (FTA-ABS) double-staining (DS) test has been developed for microscopes equipped with incident illumination, and the procedure offers many advantages over the FTA-ABS test when tests are performed with this equipment. In this study, 346 fresh sera, including 35 from patients with syphilis, were evaluated by the FTA-ABS DS test. Parameters for invest...

In this paper a new method for mapping fault tree into fuzzy algorithms is introduced. This method is based on the minimal cut sets of a fault tree. This method is characterized by its one-to-one mapping from fault tree (FT) to fuzzy algorithm (FA) and vice versa. So it is consider a canonical method to map FTs into FA. Fault tree analysis (FTA) is a risk analysis technique to assess likelihood...

Drawing upon the presentations made at the fourth conference on Future-oriented Technology Analysis, this essay reflects on the implications of the current period of instability and discontinuity for the practice of FTA or foresight. In the past the demand environment for foresight on research and innovation policy favoured application to priority-setting and articulation of demand. New tendenc...

A widely used immunoglobulin M (IgM) detection assay for the diagnosis of neonatal congenital syphilis is the fluorescent treponemal antibody absorption test used with fractionated serum (FTA-ABS 19S IgM test). Reading the results of the FTA-ABS test is more cumbersome than reading those of the FTA-ABS double staining (FTA-ABS-DS) test, a confirmatory test for specific IgG. To verify that the F...

â  â  love and affection from jibran's point of view â  â  â  sadegh fathi dehkordi * â  â  abstract â  from the view point of jibran khalil jibran, affection is the law of life and the base of all things in the world. affection is one of the manifestations of god and it is a light extracted from other lights. real affection is endless .the human being cannot learn affection because it is ...

This paper is concerned with the sustainability of free-trade areas. I begin with an FTA that is formed as a political equilibrium and examine conditions under which the FTA is sustainable, i.e., governments do not leave it. The sustainability of the FTA is in°uenced by governments' valuation on political contributions, discount factors, the lobbying position of the speci ̄c-interest group in in...

In this paper we compare and contrast the political viability of bilateral Free Trade Area (FTA) Agreements in the presence of tariffs and quotas. Assuming that the government maximizes a weighted sum of welfare and producer profits, we show that the political viability of FTAs varies according to whether trade restrictions take the form of tariffs or quotas. A key result is that whereas an FTA...