This paper is based on a development over the past 5years in France which culminated in 2013 with the construction of a demonstration of this ballastless trackform on the French network north of Paris.In this paper, we summarise the history of this development, ≪New Ballastless Track≫ (NBT) through the conceptual design phases, the extensive laboratory testing, culminating in the construction of the demonstration track. Construction was completed in August 2013 and train operations started earlier this year.We complete our paper with our conclusions concerning the difference in life cycle costs between NBT and ballasted track. To that end, we confirm the conclusions of many previous studies over the past few years, while throwing some light on the parameters which will tend to accentuate the advantage of NBT.

Compact city policies such as Melbourne 2030 have been established in Australia for a range of reasons including climate change. It is now clear that the Melbourne 2030 policy has not been effective-with new development mostly on the urban fringe. This policy failure has often been sheeted home to resident and local government resistance to densification. This article suggests this narrative is insufficient to explain this failure at a metropolitan-wide scale and is clearly mistaken in one suburb, where aspects of the planning system appear to thwart the aims of strategic policy by encouraging speculation and producing vacant sites. Brunswick is an inner-city suburb with good opportunities for intensification adjacent to transit lines and on former industrial sites. In spite of resident resistance, 80 per cent of new dwellings proposed between 2002 and 2007 were approved for construction, and would have increased housing stock by 13 per cent. However, by 2009 just under half of all approved dwellings had been completed or commenced on site, while construction of the taller and higher density projects tended to stall, the sites having been on-sold and permits extended. We suggest developers anticipate that the planning system will ultimately approve significant increases in height and density, using Melbourne 2030 to over-ride local policy via appeals to the Planning Tribunal. Such permits produce significant capital gains that can be cashed without construction. We argue that elements of the Victorian planning system encourage ambit claims, contestation, cynicism and speculation, thwarting negotiations between residents, councils and developers towards a more compact city. The focus on the idea that resident resistance is the problem obscures the role the planning system itself plays in frustrating the goals of compact city policy.

In conceptualising e-learning as a new pedagogic space, this paper builds on work which argues that the theoretical frameworks of Activity Theory and Bernstein can be brought into a productive relationship (Daniels, 2001a, 2001b, 2004). Using Activity Theory (Engestrom, 1999, 2001; Engestrom, Miettinen, & Punamaki, 1999) and Basil Bernstein's pedagogic device (Bernstein, 1996, 2000), an examination of the dynamics that shape practice when e-learning technology is introduced into face-to-face teaching practice is undertaken. Activity Theory is shown to be successful in identifying the tensions/contradictions that emerge when the two activity systems of face-to-face teaching and e-learning technologies come into juxtaposition. The possibility for expansionist learning through reflection, discussion and critical analysis is examined. Bernstein's pedagogic device is found to be useful in examining the means through which pedagogic discourse is established and maintained. Specifically, the notion of recontextualisation is shown to provide the opportunity to operationalise the mechanics that shape pedagogic practice when e-learning is integrated into teaching. It is concluded that the two frameworks provide different lenses for research that are complementary in examining the dynamics that shape teaching practice.

As the old joke goes, I always thought that cunnilingus was an Irish airline until I discovered the Royal Opera House. Having just spent 20 odd glorious hours sitting through Wagner's Ring Cycle at Covent Garden, I have read as many reviews of this disputed production. What puzzles me is that while these get all excited about the Oxfam shop costumes and cardboard box sets, all have studiously ignored the three separate instances of oral sex which Alberich bestows on a Rhine maiden during Das Rheingold. It occurs to me that the director escaped controversy because the tight knit opera community closed ranks to prevent the tabloids mounting a salivating and rabid attack with …

The furore over compensation for 14 policemen traumatised by what they witnessed at Hillsborough Stadium is strange indeed. One general practitioner wrote to The Times saying, more or less, that she had had to witness some gruesome things in her life but no one gave her any extra money. The tabloids howled insinuations about nambypambiness, and the general response showed that matters psychological and psychiatric are still primitively misunderstood in Britain, even among the medical profession. Anybody who has actually spent some time with a person who truly suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder will know how it can break someone more completely than …

Dominic Lawson, moving recently from the editorship of the Spectator to that of the Sunday Telegraph, recalled the report of a “rather expensive piece of market research” that he had received when he arrived in his first editorial chair. According to the results, 24% of readers thought that the Spectator carried too much sport. This was interesting because there was no sport whatever in the magazine at that time. The experience taught Lawson something about the value of market research—”and also impelled me immediately to inaugurate the ‘Spectator Sport’ column.” Lawson's reminiscence triggered one of my own. Nearly 30 years ago, on joining the staff of New Scientist, I learned that a rather expensive piece of market research had been commissioned. There …

There's an awful lot of them about these days—morals I mean. We've had a lot of them from the leaders of the main political parties in Britain. And ex-Roman Catholic Bishop Roddy Wright could have done with some of his ex-lover's morals before selling his story to the News of the World. His ex-mistress tore up his cheque for £2000 and gave her story to the BBC rather than to the chequebook waving tabloid newspapers. That's about as close to the moral high ground as I've seen among this bunch. I confess to a deep suspicion of those from whom the word moral escapes their lips …

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of a preseason physical training programme that taught landing and falling skills in improving landing skills technique and preventing injury in junior elite Australian football players. Methods: 723 male players who participated in an under 18 elite competition were studied prospectively in a non-randomised controlled trial over two consecutive football seasons. There were 114 players in the intervention group and 609 control players. The eight session intervention programme taught players six landing, falling, and recovery skills, which were considered fundamental for safe landing in Australian football. Landing skills taught in these sessions were rated for competence by independent and blinded assessors at baseline and mid-season. Results: Evaluation of landing skills found no significant differences between the groups at baseline. Evaluation after the intervention revealed overall improvement in landing skills, but significantly greater improvement in the intervention group (z = −7.92, p = 0.001). Players in the intervention group were significantly less likely (relative rate 0.72, 95% confidence interval 0.52 to 0.98) to sustain an injury during the season than the control group. In particular, the time to sustaining a landing injury was significantly less for the intervention group (relative rate 0.40, 95% confidence interval 0.17 to 0.92) compared with the control group. Conclusions: Landing and falling ability can be taught to junior elite Australian football players. Players in the intervention group were protected against injury, particularly injuries related to landing and falls.

A few months ago two members of the rock band KLF burned a million pounds in the fireplace of a bothy on a remote Scottish island. They wanted to be artists, and this was their artistic statement. Then one of their friends tried to hawk a case full of the ashes round some London galleries, “complete with full documentation.” A futile act of vandalism was suddenly transformed into quite a useful social act by showing up a section of the modern art world for the charade that it is. “Anyone can't just …

It is Saturday morning and my friend Bob strides purposefully in from the garden to flush out his two children from the room where they have been watching television since dawn. “Come on you two, you'll get square eyes if you stay here any longer,” he cliches in the style unique to parents of young children. Her eyes not leaving Power Rangers for a millisecond, his precocious 6 year old daughter murmurs sweetly and reassuringly, “It's all right daddy, every now and again we turn and look at the round doorknob.” A subdued father closes the door quietly behind him and returns obediently to his weeds.Before considering the neurological significance …

Those who believe the French scientists' claim that the Murorua explosion is perfectly safe should have a word with the citizens of Caithness in Scotland, whose fast breeder nuclear reactor programme spewed out lumps of radioactive waste to the extent that the beaches near Dounreay had to be closed. Scientists in both France and Caithness offered reassurances about the safety of their schemes—often in the tones of weary patronage so beloved of scientists talking to their public. When it comes to knowing which side their bread is buttered, however, scientists are no different from the rest of the population: it's hard to face up to …