THE EFFECT OF FAILURES IN INTERVAL CONTROL SYSTEMS ON THE MOVEMENT OF TRAINS ON DOUBLE-TRACK SECTIONS

The level of reliability of systems for train traffic train separation directly affects the safety and conti- nuity of their movement, the speed and timing of delivery of goods and passengers, the labor intensity and cost of transportation, and the costs of operating these systems. If we consider a section of a railway as a complex dynamic system, then with a relatively small weight of fixed assets of technical means intended for interval regulation of train traffic, failures in them signifi- cantly affect the system output. On the railways of Russia, the systems of interval regulation are mainly used with the use of track circuits and the division of hauls into block. Such systems are widely used on the world’s railways. There- fore, the problem of quantifying losses in train movement from failures of electric interlocking devices while through-working and from failures of automatic blocking devices is relevant. The amount of loss depends on the intensity of failures of technical means and the time to restore their operability, on the intensity of train traffic, the length of block sections, the ratio of freight and pas- senger trains on the section, the speed of their movement according to the schedule and the degree of speed reduction due to failures of the considered technical means Both freight and passenger trains move along sections of the Russian railways, the speeds of which can differ significantly, which also significantly affects the traffic loss from such failures. When calculating, one has to use data on block crossing capacity and the capability of accelerating trains. The calculation results provide the possibility of an objective choice of the type of systems under consideration and the requirements for them in a new design or during their reconstruction on railway sections, as well as the possibility of correct distribution of costs to increase the reliability of the oper- ated systems.

“Drowning in data”: personal and institutional crises as the result of extensive digitalization

The following work is a commentary on the article “Digitalization challenges for technogenic civilization” written by Evgeniy Maslanov. The main focus here is on an individual, facing the new experience of digital world as an average user and a researcher at the same time. New technical tools, which have been put into use throughout history of humanity, require continual redefinition by a human being of himself/herself in the world and in multiple professional fields. Nevertheless, one of the most drastic issues in question is whether a virtual personality could be considered as an “extension” of a real life human, or it represents a “digital twin”. With any position accepted, digital systems initiate a certain order of power relations, where digital “footprints” assemble into personal biographies. This fact challenges not only personal privacy, but also existential conti-nuity of humanity. At the level of scientific research, one of the major disputes centers on data collection and its claim for the leading methodological strategy of science today. This study argues that the dispute only illustrates transitional period related to approbation of new data algorithms. Therefore, it is in no way a substitution of theoretical level of science with empirical knowledge. Nevertheless, the issue that caught E. Maslanov’s attention is extremely valuable. The new “big data” tools require competence, which becomes the key factor of adequate methodological improvements and scientific conceptualization.

Narrative Organization and Contextual Constraints: The Case of Modern Greek Storytelling

Use of connective forms in oral narratives is increasingly investigated as a device for signaling higher level discoursal relations, thus serving the stories' global organization. I set out to explore connective forms as both local and global links using Modern Greek storytelling as its data. My aims are to uncover the stories' template of organizational relations and to demonstrate their context sensitivity. This is achieved by looking into linkage forms in storytelling for adults as well as in storytelling addressed to children. The results of the analysis bring to the fore an audience-shaped strategy of conti-nuity and explicit signposting in the case of stories for children, as opposed to a strategy of salient segmentational shifts that mainly relies on devices other than discourse markers in stories for adults. I show that these strategies are revealing of an interaction between the stories' textual choices and their im-mediate context of occurrence. In addition, they index and are shaped by the stories' wider sociocultural context of occurrence. (Discourse Analysis; Sociolinguistics)