Train Ticket Research Articles

International teaching assistants’ production of focus intonation

We report on a longitudinal investigation of the realization of English focus by 19 Mandarin-speaking International Teaching Assistants (ITAs). Participants read passages containing contrastive information (e.g., The price of a train ticket is twenty dollars, while the price of a bus ticket is eleven dollars), and then responded to the experimenter’s questions (Is the price of a bus ticket twenty dollars?). ITAs were tested within a month of their arrival in the US, and again at the end of their first semester. Overall, the productions of ITAs at both points in time were judged as less natural by native English listeners than the productions of the native speakers of English, though the naturalness of some ITA productions improved at the second sampling. Acoustic analyses of the ITA productions and comparison with the productions of 18 native English speakers revealed a good deal of interspeaker variability in the ITA productions, with several different patterns associated with the “unnatural” productions: (a) failure to accent the focused element; (b) failure to deaccent the word following the focused element; and (c) failure to align the accent with the stressed syllable of the focused word, with the entire focused word spoken on high pitch.

Lost in Transaction: Individual-Level Welfare Loss in Quickly-Circulating Durable Goods Markets with Planned Temporary Ownership

A new style of durable goods consumption through a large scale online redistribution marketplace (e.g. eBay and Yahoo! Auction), characterized by a relatively small degree of usage and a short-term ownership, is becoming increasingly popular these days. Yet, the welfare structures of such emerging markets have not been investigated. By using a unique dataset of quickly-circulating multi-use train ticket resale markets, and by investigating perfectly-substitutable goods, this short article models, estimates, and analyzes individual-level welfare loss in such rapidly-growing market sectors. Our analysis shows that individual-level welfare losses caused by search and resale costs are non-negligibly large, ranging from 3% to 15% of the new good price. We also find that such individual-level welfare losses, which could be considered as hidden charges, are largely heterogeneous across buyers with differing degrees of intended use. These losses are described as disadvantageous to users who demand light degrees of usage.

Roughing It

Roughing It Song Sokze (bio) Translated by Medina Jenny Wang (bio) A trip with no open arms waiting at your destination and no consequences whether you get there or not. They agreed not to spend any money on this “hobo’s journey” but decided to set out from the station, where everyone starts a vacation. The first event on their journey was the weather: fat drops of rain began to fall the moment they met, so they wouldn’t be congratulating themselves on choosing a wonderful day for a hike. Manjae, Bongsu, Yŏngdŏk—the three met in front of Kŭmch’ŏn Station Historical Entrance and formed a triangle as they stood staring out at the rain falling on the plaza. Since Manjae had taken a high-speed train from Seoul, it might seem like their hobo trip was compromised from the start, but the tickets hadn’t cost him any money. Back in tenth grade, he’d gone to an elementary school class reunion and met an old classmate called Kijŏng who was attending a rail workers’ vocational high school. Manjae never paid for another train ticket again. While his friend Kijŏng was studying to be a rail worker, Manjae got to pass right through the turnstile, and after his friend graduated, Manjae’s free rides were a little more official, thanks to Kijŏng’s rail worker ID. When Bongsu first suggested the trip, he didn’t say anything about traveling like hobos. Once they’d decided on the trip, [End Page 69] however, Manjae relayed Yŏngdŏk’s comment that it might be fun to go on a trip that didn’t cost any money—like in the old days—and all Bongsu said was that he’d been thinking of not going anyway because it would be a waste of money. Bongsu thought he’d ride to the station on his uncle’s antique moped—as he usually did—but the uncle had taken the old bike out the day before and hadn’t yet returned. His grandmother told him over the phone that the thing had completely broken down. His uncle had abandoned it on the banks of the Naktong River about five li away and was walking back home. So Yŏngdŏk got out his bicycle, thinking that they could ride to the station together with Bongsu on the back. Yŏngdŏk strapped his backpack in reverse across his chest, and Bongsu wore his the normal way on his back, like a turtle shell, so that one could use the seat and the other could perch on the rear rack. But the old bicycle—which had been ridden by Yŏngdŏk’s father, a teacher, to and from school every day for the past thirty years and that had retired along with the old man—wasn’t up to the task of carrying two twenty-year-olds stuffed full of food like hibernating bears who didn’t know how long they might have to starve themselves on this hobo journey, plus their backpacks filled to double capacity with provisions. When they climbed on, the back tire groaned and sighed—just like Yŏngdŏk’s father when he sat down to breakfast the morning of his retirement party—all the air went out with a hiss and a whoosh. Yŏngdŏk ignored this and stepped on the pedal, which resulted in a loud pop from the front tire as it gave out. In the end, they could only balance their packs on the bike and walk it all the way to the station, but even that little bit of help from the bicycle helped them get to Kŭmch’ŏn Station a few minutes early to meet Manjae just as he was getting off the train. Bongsu grabbed Manjae’s backpack first thing and started rummaging through it to make sure he’d brought all the equipment, as promised. The tent, in its own bag, had been purchased with Kijŏng’s very first paycheck as a railworker and was the most important item since their hobo’s journey would be all [End Page 70...

Robustness of Price Perception: How Strong are Anchoring, Left-Digit- and Framing-Effects when Promoting Sales Offers?

While the large number of publications on behavioral pricing and partly spectacular results suggest that it is easily possible to influence parameters in the consumers´ price perception (for example, by providing price anchors as competitive prices, 99-price endings, information on a relative or absolute saving or information on availability of the prices by the suppliers), this empirical study based on experimental designs comes to a contrary conclusion: it turns out that the assessment of perceived value for money and cheapness for different sales promotion campaigns in Germany (train ticket, smartphone flat rate, filter coffee) is amazingly robust and that psychological factors tested in different experiments have a relatively low impact. The theoretical, practical and research implications of these findings are discussed.

Diversification Performance Evaluation of Post Offices in Taiwan from Customers’ Viewpoints

Diversification adds values and increases profits to the company, and more and more post offices around the world use diversification strategies either postal or non-postal services to increase profitability. Chunghwa Post, a state-owned enterprise in Taiwan, intends to use its infrastructure for diversification to gain revenues from non-postal products and services. This case study first summarizes the satisfaction levels of five diversified products and services provided by Chunghwa Post and then makes a comparison between Chunghwa Post and its rivalries in terms of performance evaluation from customers’ viewpoints. The results show that some demographic variables have different satisfaction levels in diversified products and services statistically. In addition, Chunghwa Post has the advantage over Taiwan Railways Administration when train tickets can be picked up from post offices whereas Chunghwa Post has the disadvantage in online shopping mall services. By figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of diversified products and services, the management can decide if a particular diversified product or service is to be disregarded or vice versa. Therefore, marketing strategies can be designed for a particular diversified product or service in order to gain competitive advantage in the future.

The beginning of RNA.

In October 1993, Reinhard Luhrmann organized a small RNA meeting in Marburg, Germany, and invited me as a speaker. This was the same year the Nobel Prize for Splicing was awarded, and many of the meeting talks concerned the mechanism of splicing. I was excited that Joan Steitz, who had first proposed that snRNPs were involved in splicing, was the Keynote Speaker at this conference. She had also recently been named the President-Elect of the newly formed RNA Society. Two interacting low abundance snRNPs, U11 and U12, had been discovered the year before in the Steitz lab, but their function was unknown. My lab had recently discovered that the U11 snRNA binds to a Rous sarcoma virus (RSV) RNA element that helps regulate the balance between spliced and unspliced viral RNA. This was before AT-AC introns were discovered, and U11 and U12 snRNPs were found to substitute for U1 and U2 snRNPs in a minor class of spliceosome. I flew to Frankfurt from Baltimore, found the train station and then had to figure out how to buy a train ticket from a non-English speaking ticket machine. Finally, I arrived in Marburg, a bit jet-lagged, and went to the meeting hotel. Tim Nilsen, whom I barely knew, was sitting in the lobby when I checked in. He immediately attacked me for a critical review that he thought I had written six years earlier of his paper on m6A methylation of influenza RNA. It is possible I did write the offending review, but his paper was published nevertheless. That was when I learned that Tim never forgets a thing. I thought the meeting had a great mix of people working on mRNA splicing and on viral RNAs. Other invited speakers from the US included Bob Krug and Mike Malim. Bob had made the amazing discovery that influenza virus stole caps from cellular mRNAs. Mike studied Rev-mediated export of unspliced HIV RNA. Incidentally, Bob had also identified m6A in the influenza genomic RNA in the '70s, when my group had begun to study it in RSV. Tim talked about the role of U6 snRNP in cis and trans splicing in nematodes. Reinhard talked about his lab's detailed analysis of snRNPs and of the spliceosome. The meeting was very stimulating and interactive, ending with a dinner and dance party at Reinhard's home. Marburg turned out to be a charming small German town with a castle, despite its infamy as the site of an outbreak of Marburg virus (a relative of Ebola). I remember walking around town a lot. On one of these walks back to the hotel, Joan shared her frustration with Tim and me that the journal Cell did not appreciate RNA work. This conversation led to the idea that a new journal should be started that focused on RNA. By the end of the Marburg meeting, Tim had agreed to start such a journal and to be Editor in Chief. He asked me to be the Editor for Viral RNA. I don't think I believed he would pull it off, so I didn't leap at the chance. I had no idea it would become the leading journal for the RNA community and regret that I didn't accept his offer. To my surprise, the first copy of RNA appeared less than a year and a half later, in March 1995, as the journal for the RNA Society. It has always been both rigorous and fun to read. It has an important role as a place to get fast and fair reviews of papers on any aspect of RNA biology. I recommend it to both my graduate students and colleagues as a reasonable place to send a paper that will be seen by the RNA community. The timing of its beginning was propitious, as there has been an explosion of new findings in the RNA field in the last 20 years. I have been fascinated with the discoveries of new types of RNAs, including microRNAs and long noncoding RNAs. Genome sequencing revealed there were fewer protein-coding genes than expected, requiring massive alternative splicing to synthesize mRNAs for all the missing proteins. Mechanisms of nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) remain interesting and controversial. Finally, the m6A field seems to be undergoing a rebirth with many functions ascribed to cellular mRNAs containing this internal modification that was originally studied in viral RNAs decades ago. It is hard to imagine the RNA field without the RNA journal.

English

Using an Automatic Teller Machine, customers can access their bank accounts. ATMs were originally developed as just cash dispensers; they have evolved to include many other bank-related functions such as Purchasing, Postage stamps, Lottery tickets, Train tickets. The problem is that, if our debit card is lost then we cannot transact the account. Also if our friend wants money from us immediately then we cannot give the money by ATM. In proposed system we have overcome the problems of manual system which are given above. We can access our account from ATM without using debit card. It is helpful for the user to withdraw money from another user’s account with their permission in case of emergency. In this system GSM module is used.

TÜRKİYE VE İNGİLTERE'DE DEMİRYOLLARININ ÖZELLEŞTİRİLMESİ SÜRECİ

Turkey has a railway network 6 times shorter than the EU average. Transportation in Turkey is dominated by the road transportation both in urban and rural areas. Insufficient railway system spoils the Turkish economy in terms of misallocation of resources and inefficient income distribution. The share of the railway investments from the budget is very low compared to the share for the motorway investments. Lack of adequate railway system causes social imbalance. Everyday, the lengths of the motorways are increased and coach-based transportation system makes citizens price inelastic. The increased car ownership requires priorities on building more roads that makes Turkey more dependent on foreign countries. Restructuring and reorganisation programmes are needed to improve railways. Thus, new legislation, new strategic management, improved technology and new control mechanisms are required. Most of the proposed schemes are based on the privatisation of railways. The critical issue is how effective can privatisation be in Turkish railway system. Thus, the first example of the railway privatisation -the British Railways (BR)- is analysed. BR was privatised in early 1990s by separating the infrastructure and the operating services held by the private sector. Basic aim was the renewal of the infrastructure and the creation of competition between different operators. This would increase the efficiency both for passenger and freight transportation. The expected advantages were to create competition that would benefit consumers, promote railway as the primary transportation, create opportunities for development and investment and protect the environment. Privatisation of BR is completed and the results have highly been criticised by different groups. Private sector concentrates on special areas, train tickets are expensive and there is an increase in train delays and accidents. It is argued that the competition, the basic aim of the privatisation, is not achieved by the operating services. Due to the short-term contracts, private sector avoids making any investment on technology and recruitment Railway privatisation is different from water, gas and electricity. BR case is found unsuccessful in achieving the expected advantages of privatisation. It is a good example for showing the expected gains and losses before privatlsmg the Turkish Railways. Railway transportation is advised to be provided by a single entity, preferably by the national authority for optimum efficiency.

Courtly, and: Kemo Sabe, and: For Ruth Stone

Courtly, and: Kemo Sabe, and: For Ruth Stone Joseph Millar (bio) Courtly Forget the high-flown improbable phrases, the tinned fish and flowers, lipstick and wine—no matter Venice’s gimcrack cornices holding their thighs apart in the night or the red dahlias swaying on long stems walloping each other in the summer wind. It isn’t the blue rocks at low tide or the pale sea grass by the wall, lady of time and dried white flowers, lady of distant rain who wanders off looking for a book of matches along the road near the coffee shop built to look like a chateau and spattered with bird shit where gulls and ravens like the Hollywood movies have feasted for almost a century on the corpses of Lancelot and Keats. Nobody knows what it’s cost you to keep facing up to the world like this with its airport exhaust and chalk dust, both of us tired, both of us cold, trying to talk with the professors and lonely for California. [End Page 20] I bring these today to the door of your dream, as close as I can approach: saltwater to heal your sinuses, coffee with soy milk and coconut, blanket to warm your shoulders, bag of blue ice for your spine. Kemo Sabe My brother looks down at his fingers sorting the herb and mineral caps, bloodroot and barberry, burdock, zinc, prescribed by his holistic doctor. The tumor at the base of his tongue has shrunk a bit in the last months though he must still take a painkiller to swallow his chicken dinner. We’re in a quiet booth in Max’s Deli in Redwood City having just been to see The Lone Ranger, masked Texas cowboy of our childhood riding his alabaster horse across the landscapes of the Southwest, protector of the weak and scourge of all evil, with his Indian partner Tonto, once played in Hollywood by Jay Silverheels an all-star Mohawk lacrosse player and today by the white man Johnny Depp, heartthrob of women and master of disguise, with the taxidermic corpse of a raven covering his head and slashes of white paint below each eye [End Page 21] and we’re joking about the movie remembering our childhood diving like bats through the summer dusk, firing tin pistols into the air or else sneaking up on the twilit house to free all its hopeless prisoners. Sometimes we wanted to be the Lone Ranger, masked face of justice and valor, and sometimes we wanted to be Tonto with his buckskin clothes and his pinto horse who could track a man over solid rock, organic, native, and whole— my power-brother in his blue rain-jacket gambling on his Hanoi doctor who feeds his patients cobra blood running herbal ivs into their veins, and though he still looks way too thin my brother’s eyes are bright in his face and I think he embraces his unknown fate watching him hunch down over his plate working his way steadily forward through Max’s Lemon Roast Chicken Special. For Ruth Stone Sometimes you say bad things about people claiming it can’t be helped you crawl farther into the darkness just to see what it feels like but today you count the late frozen stars and Jupiter drifting into the dawn [End Page 22] because Ruth the poet has passed away who listened to the muse alone: the mailman and the trash truck driver, the women who work in Lost and Found, their faded hair wispy as cotton gauze in the discount store downtown. They are folding a dark wool sweater that smells of camphor and lighter fluid, in one pocket a train ticket from Roanoke to Syracuse. The creaky hinge on the Ladies Room door is silent now in the vacant station, only a traveling woman asleep, her suitcase tied with ribbons and twine and snowflakes dusting the platform, their stellar dendrites and crystal rosettes flickering like signals from outer space planetary and blind. [End Page 23] Joseph Millar Joseph Millar’s three collections are Overtime, a finalist for the Oregon Book Award; Fortune; and Blue Rust (all from Carnegie Mellon UP). His...

Ten books.

Only ten books? A quandary: the fewer I can have the more I will expose my prejudices and uncertainties by choosing. ‘We are our choices', as Jean Paul Sartre1 said, probably not thinking of books. I'll throw in another of his lines. ‘All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books'. I would not adopt that sentiment wholeheartedly; I've learned as much from relationships and work as I have from books, but it is true that one can detect one's good and bad selves reflected in books with a clarity no other medium can provide. I am a lifelong greedy reader of anything that comes to hand. I'll read the back of a train ticket if there's nothing else available. But which books influenced me? It is well over 40 years since I chose psychiatry as a career. I can only single out books, mostly novels, which have had an impact on the way I understand other people and their lives, broadened my horizons about the often unfathomable motives and goals of patients and their families, and on the way we practise and organise our services.

Report From the Field: The Los Angeles Archives Bazaar

Whatever lingering confusion you feel about the name ‘‘Archives Bazaar’’ dissolves as you step into the exhibition hall. The airy confines of the Los Angeles Times Reference Room in USC’s Doheny Memorial Library— usually a studious place where students bow their heads over books and laptops—have been transformed into a bustling marketplace. Not a marketplace of threads and trinkets but of stories, swapped between archivist and researcher, collector and author, librarian and student across some eighty tables, most of them topped with vintage postcards, century-old train tickets, orange-flavored candy, black-and-white photographs, maps, books, a stuffed owl, and an Army-green typewriter used to write the novel Psycho—among many other things. ‘‘Bazaar’’ fits the scene. Now in its eighth year, the Los Angeles Archives Bazaar is the first of its kind: a daylong celebration of Southern California’s history that brings together, all in one place, collections from academic libraries, museums, official archives, and community organizations. Crucially, the bazaar incorporates private collections and independent archives that researchers might otherwise miss, transforming private passions into public resources. Take David Boule. For decades, the marketing and public relations professional has collected seemingly everything related to

Service Innovation in Public Sector : A Case Study on PT. Kereta Api Indonesia

Innovation is an important key for an organization to win the market competition, both in aspects of organization, culture, and business to produce an excellence service and product. Service innovation has been developed to respond quickly the demand of society that increasingly aware of the importance of quality service. PT. Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI) as one of the Indonesian state-owned companies engaged in public transportation made a breakthrough by launching a service product innovation, purchasing system of train tickets and new trains. This paper analyzes the types of service product innovation, success factors of innovation, and explore the barriers of innovation. This study used qualitative methods based on review of the innovation management literature and semi-structured interviews. The role of leadership has an important influence in shaping the behavior of the organization. These organizational learning concepts are used to gain a dynamic of service innovation, it suggests that the company should still perform improvement processes in developing service innovation to meet the challenges faced.

Community Informatics in Chongqing: A Case Study of the Real-Name and ID Requirement Policy in the Chinese Railway System

This study discusses strategies for narrowing the digital divide by examining the real-name and ID requirement policy that governs online purchases of train tickets in China. Using a case study, the authors of this study asks what factors influence online ticket purchasing by railway passengers and examines how Chinese public libraries offer online ticket-purchasing assistance as a strategy for bridging the digital divide. Deploying both quantitative and qualitative methods—including questionnaires and semistructured interviews—the authors found that four factors—gender, age, social status, and privacy concerns—were most important in influencing passengers' online ticket purchasing, and that Chinese public libraries do facilitate access to the digital world.

Concept of Automated Machine using Mealy

In recent lifestyles human require rapid processing with best quality which provides easiest lifestyle. Now-a-days, automated machines can be found everywhere in our everyday life. For example, automated machine can be found at the train stations sell ing train tickets. In the schools and offices automated machine provides drinks and snacks which is providing facilities to human being. And sales of goods and services via automated machine are growing strongly in India provides easiest lifestyle. Automated machine modeling is the crucial part in developing proposed model as this reduces the human resources and has been modeled using. This dissertation describes a model of an automated machine totally based on Mealy concept of FSM. The proposed model will increase the efficiency of automated machine and will also lead to cost reduction, saving time and ease of usage. The first phase involves selection of items to be purchased by consumer. In next phase, the machine generates the respective total amount required to be paid. At last the vendee enters the amount to get their products dispensed and the extra amount will be returned back by machine.

Evaluation of Effective Factors on Internet Buying Intention of Train Ticket Based on Dtpb Model

In today's competitive environment, with growth of buying from internet sites, identify and attention to customer needs for companies is consider important. Hence, organizations are trying to create appropriate field in competition including the Islamic Republic of Iran Railways that by given internet tickets has provided faster and easier access of their customers. This research is applied and the nature of it is the descriptive correlation and its is purpose explanation of effective factors on internet buying intention of train ticket based on DTPB model and it examine impact of attitude factors with subset- compatibility, complexity, relative advantage- and subjective norm with subset- subjective influences- and perceived behavioral control with subsets- facilitating, self-efficacy- on behavioral intention . Questionnaire is used to collect data that its validity is approved by supervisors and advisor professors and its reliability is confirmed by doing pre-test from 21 train tickets online shoppers and calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficient. After distribution of questionnaires as field in railway station of Tehran, analysis of data was performed by Liserl software. The results confirmed positive effect of all factors except compatibility factor.

Transient dwelling: trains as places of identification for the floating population of China

China has experienced massive rural–urban migration, producing the huge so-called ‘floating population’ (liudong renkou). This article attends to what it means to be thus between places by focusing on the embodied and emotional experience of migrant travel. Each year sees the Spring Festival rush (Chun Yun) with the largest annual movement of people as millions of these rural migrant laborers (nongmingong) return to their homes for the holidays. The Spring Festival rush is marked by huge crowds queuing overnight for train tickets, with throngs of migrants carrying woven bags of belongings and gifts on their shoulders, who end up standing in the overcrowded ‘hard-seat’ carriages of trains. By closely reading some of the poems from the emerging genre of ‘Hired laborers literature,’ this article explores migrants' affective and emotional journeys. It argues that this transit experience is one of the key shared sites of common identification for a migrant population whose mode of inhabitation is through circulation and mobility. It also argues that mobility creates shared experiences characterized by specific corporealities, material cultures, and senses of social stratification.

Listlessness in the Archive

Listlessness in the Archive

System Personality and Persuasion in Human-Computer Dialogue

The human-computer dialogue research field has been studying interaction with computers since the early stage of Artificial Intelligence, however, research has often focused on very practical tasks to be completed with the dialogues. A new trend in the field tries to implement persuasive techniques with automated interactive agents; unlike booking a train ticket, for example, such dialogues require the system to show more anthropomorphic qualities. The influences of such qualities in the effectiveness of persuasive dialogue is only starting to be studied. In this article we focus on one important perceived trait of the system: personality, and explore how it influences the persuasiveness of a dialogue system. We introduce a new persuasive dialogue system and combine it with a state of the art personality utterance generator. By doing so, we can control the system’s extraversion personality trait and observe its influence on the user’s perception of the dialogue and its output. In particular, we observe that the user’s extraversion influences their perception of the dialogue and its persuasiveness, and that the perceived personality of the system can affect its trustworthiness and persuasiveness. We believe that theses observations will help to set up guidelines to tailor dialogue systems to the user’s interaction expectations and improve the persuasive interventions.

Gain of transportation revenue by optimization of quota allocation for in-between stations

An algorithm for calculation of optimal train ticket selling share for a departure station and in-between stations is proposed to obtain the ceiling total income. Available demand statistics for relevant stations are taken into account. The solution of the problem is reduced to applying of simplex-method to dual linear programming procedure with special objective function.

An empirical investigation of efficiency and price uniformity in competing auctions

This paper investigates hypotheses related to efficiency and price uniformity in online competing auctions based on two theoretical predictions from Peters and Severinov [Peters, M., Severinov, S., 2006. Internet auctions with many traders. Journal of Economic Theory 130, 220–245]. The investigation is conducted using a large and ideal data set for online competing train ticket auctions, and the findings support the theoretical predictions in large parts.