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Research and development Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in Europe as research and technological development (RTD), is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products, and improving existing ones. Research and development constitutes the first stage of development of a potential new service or the production process.
Residential area A residential area is a land used in which housing predominates, as opposed to industrial and commercial areas.\nHousing may vary significantly between, and through, residential areas.
Arithmetic Arithmetic (from Ancient Greek ἀριθμός (arithmós) 'number', and τική [τέχνη] (tikḗ [tékhnē]) 'art, craft') is an elementary part of mathematics that consists of the study of the properties of the traditional operations on numbers—addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponentiation, and extraction of roots. In the 19th century, Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano formalized arithmetic with his Peano axioms, which are highly important to the field of mathematical logic today.
Operation Mincemeat Operation Mincemeat was a successful British deception operation of the Second World War to disguise the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily. Two members of British intelligence obtained the body of Glyndwr Michael, a tramp who died from eating rat poison, dressed him as an officer of the Royal Marines and placed personal items on him identifying him as the fictitious Captain (Acting Major) William Martin.
Special Activities Center The Special Activities Center (SAC) is a division of the Central Intelligence Agency responsible for covert operations and paramilitary operations. The unit was named Special Activities Division (SAD) prior to 2015.
Operations management Operations management is an area of management concerned with designing and controlling the process of production and redesigning business operations in the production of goods or services. It involves the responsibility of ensuring that business operations are efficient in terms of using as few resources as needed and effective in meeting customer requirements.
Operations research Operations research (British English: operational research), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of advanced analytical methods to improve decision-making. It is sometimes considered to be a subfield of mathematical sciences.
Emergency operations center An emergency operations center (EOC) is a central command and control facility responsible for carrying out the principles of emergency preparedness and emergency management, or disaster management functions at a strategic level during an emergency, and ensuring the continuity of operation of a company, political subdivision or other organization.\nAn EOC is responsible for strategic direction and operational decisions and does not normally directly control field assets, instead leaving tactical decisions to lower commands.
Special operations Special operations (S.O.) are military activities conducted, according to NATO, by "specially designated, organized, selected, trained, and equipped forces using unconventional techniques and modes of employment". Special operations may include reconnaissance, unconventional warfare, and counter-terrorism actions, and are typically conducted by small groups of highly-trained personnel, emphasizing sufficiency, stealth, speed, and tactical coordination, commonly known as "special forces".
Bitwise operation In computer programming, a bitwise operation operates on a bit string, a bit array or a binary numeral (considered as a bit string) at the level of its individual bits. It is a fast and simple action, basic to the higher-level arithmetic operations and directly supported by the processor.
President of the United States The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces.
History of the United States The history of the lands that became the United States began with the arrival of the first people in the Americas around 15,000 BC. Numerous indigenous cultures formed, and many saw transformations in the 16th century away from more densely populated lifestyles and towards reorganized polities elsewhere. The European colonization of the Americas began in the late 15th century, however most colonies in what would later become the United States were settled after 1600.
United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, being composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate.
United States Marine Corps The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through combined arms, implementing its own infantry, artillery, aerial, and special operations forces. The U.S. Marine Corps is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States.
Government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state.\nIn the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary.
Australian Government The Australian Government, also known as the Commonwealth Government, is the national government of Australia, a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Like other Westminster-style systems of government, the Australian Government is made up of three branches: the executive (the prime minister, the ministers, and government departments), the legislative (the Parliament of Australia), and the judicial.
Government agency A government or state agency, sometimes an appointed commission, is a permanent or semi-permanent organization in the machinery of government that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions, such as an administration. There is a notable variety of agency types.
Federal government of the United States The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a federal district (the city of Washington in the District of Columbia, where the entire federal government is based), five major self-governing territories and several island possessions. The federal government is composed of three distinct branches: legislative, executive, and judicial, whose powers are vested by the U.S. Constitution in the Congress, the president and the federal courts, respectively.
Borne government The Borne government is the forty-third and current government of the French Fifth Republic, formed on 16 May 2022 and headed by Élisabeth Borne as Prime Minister under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron.\n\n\n== Context ==\n\n\n=== Formation ===\nOn 16 May 2022, Jean Castex tendered the resignation of his government to the President of the Republic.
Local government Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of public administration within a particular sovereign state. This particular usage of the word government refers specifically to a level of administration that is both geographically-localised and has limited powers.
Combined Raw Materials Board The Combined Raw Materials Board was a temporary World War II government agency that allocated the combined economic resources of the United States and Britain. It was set up by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill on January 26, 1942.
New product development In business and engineering, new product development (NPD) covers the complete process of bringing a new product to market, renewing an existing product or introducing a product in a new market. A central aspect of NPD is product design, along with various business considerations.
Adverse effect An adverse effect is an undesired harmful effect resulting from a medication or other intervention, such as surgery. An adverse effect may be termed a "side effect", when judged to be secondary to a main or therapeutic effect.
Process mining Process mining is a family of techniques relating the fields of data science and process management to support the analysis of operational processes based on event logs. The goal of process mining is to turn event data into insights and actions.
Systems Applications Products audit Systems Applications Products audit is an audit of a computer system from SAP to check its security and data integrity. SAP is the acronym for Systems, Applications, Products.
Cross product In mathematics, the cross product or vector product (occasionally directed area product, to emphasize its geometric significance) is a binary operation on two vectors in a three-dimensional oriented Euclidean vector space (named here \n \n \n \n E\n \n \n {\displaystyle E}\n ), and is denoted by the symbol \n \n \n \n ×\n \n \n {\displaystyle \times }\n . Given two linearly independent vectors a and b, the cross product, a × b (read "a cross b"), is a vector that is perpendicular to both a and b, and thus normal to the plane containing them.
Requirement In product development and process optimization, a requirement is a singular documented physical or functional need that a particular design, product or process aims to satisfy. It is commonly used in a formal sense in engineering design, including for example in systems engineering, software engineering, or enterprise engineering.
Requirements engineering Requirements engineering (RE) is the process of defining, documenting, and maintaining requirements in the engineering design process. It is a common role in systems engineering and software engineering.
Age of candidacy Age of candidacy is the minimum age at which a person can legally hold certain elected government offices. In many cases, it also determines the age at which a person may be eligible to stand for an election or be granted ballot access.
Business requirements Business requirements, also known as stakeholder requirements specifications (StRS), describe the characteristics of a proposed system from the viewpoint of the system's end user like a CONOPS. Products, systems, software, and processes are ways of how to deliver, satisfy, or meet business requirements. Consequently, business requirements are often discussed in the context of developing or procuring software or other systems.
International law International law, also known as public international law, the law of nations and international ethics, is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognized as binding between nations. It establishes normative guidelines and a common conceptual framework for states across a broad range of domains, including war, diplomacy, trade, and human rights.
Strict liability In criminal and civil law, strict liability is a standard of liability under which a person is legally responsible for the consequences flowing from an activity even in the absence of fault or criminal intent on the part of the defendant.\nUnder the strict liability law, if the defendant possesses anything that is inherently dangerous, as specified under the "ultrahazardous" definition, the defendant is then strictly liable for any damages caused by such possession, no matter how careful the defendant is safeguarding them.In the field of torts, prominent examples of strict liability may include product liability, abnormally dangerous activities (e.g., blasting), intrusion onto another's land by livestock, and ownership of wild animals.Other than activities specified above (like ownership of wild animals, etc), US courts also consider the following activities as "ultrahazardous":\nstoring flammable liquids in quantity in an urban area\npile driving\nblasting\ncrop dusting\nfumigation with cyanide gas\nemission of noxious fumes by a manufacturing plant located in a settled area\nlocating oil wells or refineries in populated communities\ntest firing solid-fuel rocket motors.On the other hand, US courts rule the following activities as not "ultrahazardous": parachuting, drunk driving, maintaining power lines, and letting water escape from an irrigation ditch.Traditional criminal offenses that require no element of intent (mens rea) include statutory rape and felony murder.
Self-driving car liability Increases in the use of autonomous car technologies (e.g., advanced driver-assistance systems) are causing incremental shifts in the responsibility of driving, with the primary motivation of reducing the frequency of traffic collisions. Liability for incidents involving self-driving cars is a developing area of law and policy that will determine who is liable when a car causes physical damage to persons or property.
Tort A Tory () is a person who holds a political philosophy known as Toryism, based on a British version of traditionalism and conservatism, which upholds the supremacy of social order as it has evolved in the English culture throughout history. The Tory ethos has been summed up with the phrase "God, Queen, and Country".
Risk Factors
FEDERAL SIGNAL CORP /DE/ Item 1A Risk Factors
The list of risk factors is not exhaustive
There can be no assurance that we have correctly identified and appropriately assessed all factors affecting our business or that publicly available and other information with respect to these matters is complete and correct
Additional risks not presently known to us or that we currently believe to be immaterial also may adversely impact us
Should any risks and uncertainties develop into actual events, these developments could have material adverse effects on our business, financial condition and results of operations
Our financial results are subject to considerable cyclicality
Our ability to be profitable depends heavily on varying conditions in the United States government and municipal markets and the overall United States economy
The markets in which we compete are subject to considerable cyclicality, and move in response to cycles in the overall business environment and are particularly sensitive to the industrial sector
Many of our customers are municipal governmental agencies, and as such, we are dependent on municipal government spending
Spending by our municipal customers can be affected by local political circumstances, budgetary constraints, and other factors
The United States government and municipalities depend heavily on tax revenues as a source of their spending and, accordingly, there is a correlation, usually lagged by one or two years, between the overall strength of the United States economy and our sales to the United States government and municipalities
Therefore, downturns in the United States economy are likely to result in decreases in demand for our products
During previous economic downturns, we experienced decreases in sales and profitability, and we expect our business to remain subject to similar economic fluctuations in the future
5 _________________________________________________________________ [59]Table of Contents The inability to obtain raw materials, component parts, and/or finished goods in a timely and cost-effective manner from suppliers would adversely affect our ability to manufacture and market our products
We purchase raw materials and component parts from suppliers to be used in the manufacturing of our products
In addition, we purchase certain finished goods from suppliers
Changes in our relationships with suppliers or increases in the costs of purchased raw materials, component parts or finished goods could result in manufacturing interruptions, delays, inefficiencies or our inability to market products
In addition, our profit margins would decrease if prices of purchased raw materials, component parts, or finished goods increase and we are unable to pass on those increases to our customers
We operate in highly competitive markets
The markets in which we operate are highly competitive
The intensity of this competition, which is expected to continue, can result in price discounting and margin pressures throughout the industry and adversely affects our ability to increase or maintain prices for our products
In addition, certain of our competitors may have lower overall labor or material costs
Failure to keep pace with technological developments may adversely affect our operations
We are engaged in an industry which will be affected by future technological developments
The introduction of products or processes utilizing new technologies could render our existing products or processes obsolete or unmarketable
Our success will depend upon our ability to develop and introduce on a timely and cost-effective basis new products, processes and applications that keep pace with technological developments and address increasingly sophisticated customer requirements
We may not be successful in identifying, developing and marketing new products, applications and processes and product or process enhancements
We may experience difficulties that could delay or prevent the successful development, introduction and marketing of product or process enhancements or new products, applications or processes
Our products, applications or processes may not adequately meet the requirements of the marketplace and achieve market acceptance
Our business, operating results and financial condition could be materially and adversely affected if we were to incur delays in developing new products, applications or processes or product or process enhancements or if our products do not gain market acceptance
Our ability to operate our Company effectively could be impaired if we fail to attract and retain key personnel
Our ability to operate our businesses and implement our strategies depends, in part, on the efforts of our executive officers and other key employees
In addition, our future success will depend on, among other factors, our ability to attract and retain qualified personnel, including finance personnel, research professionals, technical sales professionals and engineers
The loss of the services of any key employee or the failure to attract or retain other qualified personnel could have a material adverse effect on our business or business prospects
We have international operations that are subject to foreign economic and political uncertainties
Our business is subject to fluctuations in demand and changing international economic and political conditions which are beyond our control
As of December 31, 2005, approximately 30prca of our net sales were to customers outside the United States; with approximately 20prca of net sales being supplied from our overseas operations
We expect a significant portion of our revenues and profits to come from international sales for the foreseeable future
Operating in the international marketplace exposes us to a number of risks, including abrupt changes in foreign government policies and regulations and, in some cases, international hostilities
To the extent that our international operations are affected by unexpected and adverse foreign economic and political conditions, we may experience project disruptions and losses which could significantly reduce our revenues and profits
6 _________________________________________________________________ [60]Table of Contents Some of our contracts are denominated in foreign currencies, which result in additional risk of fluctuating currency values and exchange rates, hard currency shortages and controls on currency exchange
Changes in the value of foreign currencies could increase our US dollar costs for, or reduce our US dollar revenues from, our foreign operations
Any increased costs or reduced revenues as a result of foreign currency fluctuations could affect our profits
We may incur material losses and costs as a result of product liability, warranty, recall claims or other lawsuits or claims that may be brought against us
We are exposed to product liability and warranty claims in the normal course of business in the event that our products actually or allegedly fail to perform as expected or the use of our products results, or is alleged to result, in bodily injury and/or property damage
Accordingly, we could experience material warranty or product liability costs in the future and incur significant costs to defend against these claims
We currently carry insurance and maintain reserves for product liability claims
However, we cannot be assured that our insurance coverage will be adequate if such claims do arise, and any liability not covered by insurance could have a material adverse impact on our business
A future claim could involve the imposition of punitive damages, the award of which, pursuant to state laws, may not be covered by insurance
In addition, warranty claims are not covered by our product liability coverage
Any product liability or warranty issues may adversely impact our reputation as a manufacturer of high quality, safe products and may have a material adverse effect on our business
The costs associated with complying with environmental and safety regulations could lower our margins
We, like other manufacturers, continue to face heavy governmental regulation of our products, especially in the areas of environment and employee health and safety
Complying with environmental and safety requirements has added and will continue to add to the cost of our products, and could increase the capital required
While we believe that we are in compliance in all material respects with these laws and regulations, we cannot assure you that we will not be adversely impacted by costs, liabilities or claims with respect to our operations under existing laws or those that may be adopted
These requirements are complex, change frequently and have tended to become more stringent over time
Therefore, we could incur substantial costs, including cleanup costs, fines and civil or criminal sanctions as a result of violations, or liabilities under, environmental laws and safety regulations
We are subject to a number of restrictive debt covenants
Our credit facility and other debt instruments contain certain restrictive debt covenants that may hinder our ability to take advantage of attractive business opportunities
Our ability to meet these covenants may be affected by factors outside our control