Several large pharmaceutical companies have selectively downsized their neuroscience research divisions, reflecting a growing view that developing drugs to treat brain diseases is more difficult and often more time-consuming and expensive than developing drugs for other therapeutic areas, and thus represents a weak area for investment. These withdrawals reduce global neuroscience translational capabilities and pose a serious challenge to society's interests in ameliorating the impact of nervous system diseases. While the path forward ultimately lies in improving understandings of disease mechanisms, many promising therapeutic approaches have already been identified, and rebalancing the underlying risk/reward calculus could help keep companies engaged in making CNS drugs. One way to do this that would not require upfront funding is to change the policies that regulate market returns for the most-needed breakthrough drugs. The broader neuroscience community including clinicians and patients should convene to develop and advocate for such policy changes.

It is important to have consistent ballast testing methods that provide results reflecting the performance of different ballast materials in the railway trackbed. Extensive laboratory tests have been conducted to investigate the correlation between simple ballast index tests and box tests simulating ballast field loading conditions in a simplified and controlled manner. Ballast is tamped using a vibratory poker, which causes particles to rearrange as the level of the sleeper is raised. The index tests used include single particle crushing tests, oedometer tests, and attrition tests in a revolving drum (WAV, MDA and LAA tests), in addition to water absorption and particle shape characteristics and petrographic analysis. The attrition tests performed in a revolving drum (WAV, LAA and MDA) have been found to give the best correlations with the performance of ballast in the box tests. It is considered that this may be due to the rearrangement of particles in the box test caused by the simulated tamping.

No abstract

A box test has been developed to simulate the effects of train loading and tamping on the performance of four different ballasts. The ballasts have each been loaded in the box by a simulated segment of sleeper for up to a million cycles of traffic loading, representing early life behaviour. Simulated tamping has also been performed on the ballasts causing rearrangement of grains. Results from the box tests have been found to be repeatable, and give realistic stiffness and settlement characteristics compared with full-scale tests on trackbeds in the UK. The performance of each of the four ballasts has been determined in terms of settlement characteristics, stiffness and degradation, and the results have been found to agree with results from Los Angeles abrasion tests and water absorption values, and also with petrographic analysis, thus demonstrating the usefulness of the box test for estimating the performance of ballast in the field.

No abstract