KERFIX, a time-series station in the Southern Ocean: a presentation

Between January 1990 and March 1995, the research project KERFIX undertook the first regular noncoastal multiyear acquisition of parameters related to the carbon cycle in the Southern Ocean at a time series station located at 50°40′ S–68°25′ E, 60 miles southwest of the Kerguelen Islands. The objectives of KERFIX are (1) to monitor the ocean/atmosphere CO₂ and O₂ exchanges and to understand which processes govern these exchanges (2) to observe and interpret the seasonal and interannual variability of the production, flux, decomposition and dissolution of carbon and associated elements at this location. In addition, micropaleontological studies describe the present and past flux dynamics in this oceanic area, to improve the knowledge of the transfer functions of some oceanographic proxies. This paper presents a survey of the KERFIX program: scientific objectives, organization of the field operations and some main results obtained since the beginning of KERFIX program, as well as the results of the temporal evolution of hydrological, chemical and biological parameters.     

THE EFFECT OF RT-PA ALONE AND IN COMBINATION WITH THROMBIN INHIBITORS IN A MODEL OF CEREBROVASCULAR THROMBOSIS IN THE RABBIT

Occlusivevasculardisorders,bothvenousandarterial,aresomeofthemostcommoncausesofmorbidityandmortalityindevelopedcountries.Theaimoftherapyinsuchconditionsis,firstly,torestoreandmaintainbloodflowtotheaffectedtissueororgan,andsecondly,torestorethesystemtothenormalhaemostaticstatewithoutovercompensatingandproducingcomplicationssuchashaemorrhage.Thrombolyticagents,suchasrecombinanttissueplasminogenactivator(rt-PA),arewidelyusedinthetreatmentofpatientswithacutemyocardialinfarction.However,successful…     

A dispatching decision support system for countering delay propagation in intermodal logistics networks

This paper specifies a dispatching decision support system devoted to managing intermodal logistics operations while countering delay and delay propagation. When service disruptions occur within a logistics network where schedule coordination is employed, a dispatching control model determines through an optimization process whether each ready outbound vehicle should be dispatched immediately or held to wait for some late incoming vehicles. Decisions should consider potential missed-connection costs that may occur not only at the next transfer terminals but also at hubs located further downstream. Numerical examples and a sensitivity analysis with different slack time settings for attenuating delay propagation are presented.     

Electric vehicles revisited: a review of factors that affect adoption

Electric vehicles (EVs) were recently reintroduced to the global car market. These are an improvement over their predecessors in performance and electric driving range. Although the uptake of EVs has been notable in a short period of time, most government goals for adoption have not been met. This paper reviews a growing body of peer-reviewed literature assessing factors affecting EV adoption. Several important gaps in knowledge are identified. First, there is mixed evidence of the effectiveness of government incentives in encouraging EV uptake and particularly little knowledge in regards to issues of timing and magnitude. The literature shows that public charging infrastructure is an important factor associated with EV uptake, though the direction of causality is yet unclear. Public charging infrastructure can ease range anxiety, particularly for battery electric vehicles, but there is little guidance as to the way in which government should best go about ensuring the provision of infrastructure. Lastly, the nascent EV market means that studies primarily rely on surveys about hypothetical situations. There is strong evidence that actual purchases are much lower than consumers’ stated preferences. Improving understanding of this “attitude–action” gap is important to better informing studies of EV uptake over time.     

Capacity investment model for airport facilities under demand uncertainty

This paper addresses strategic airport facility planning under demand uncertainty. Existing studies are improved by (1) allowing capacity contraction and (2) adopting more flexible delay functions. A mixed‐integer nonlinear program, which incorporates scale economies in construction, time value of money, nonlinear congestion effect, and other factors, is proposed for optimizing the capacity expansion/contraction decisions over time for multiple airport components. The stochastic problem is converted into its deterministic equivalent because the number of demand scenarios considered is finite. A discrete approximation technique is used to remove the nonlinearities. Numerical studies are presented to demonstrate the capability of the proposed model and the computational efficiency of the solution method. The “Flaw of Averages” due to faulty decisions based on the average future condition is illustrated, and trade‐offs among various costs are discussed in the numerical analyses. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Risk factors and theory building: a study to improve passenger vessel safety

Given the inherent complexity of the maritime transportation system, developing effective policy can be challenging. Using risk factors identified by an elicitation and aggregation of expert judgment, a relative-risk rating scheme was developed in the theory-building tradition of the social sciences. The model was empirically evaluated using 18 months of data from the US small passenger vessel sector. The model identified that the top 10% of relatively highest risk vessels accounted for 50% of all marine casualties during the period of examination. A policy for deploying the model nationally is proposed.     

Modelling port choice in an uncertain environment

Port choice is an important issue to be investigated to ensure the effective integration of container supply chains and the sustainable development of regional economy. The selection of appropriate ports to facilitate shipping activities and international trade is crucial for many stakeholders, including shipping lines, port administrators, cargo shippers and national governments. The task is essentially a process of multiple criterion decision-making (MCDM) under uncertainty, requiring analysts to derive rational decisions from uncertain and incomplete data related to different quantitative and qualitative determinants. This paper aims at proposing a new conceptual port choice method by explaining the role fuzzy logic in evidential reasoning in a complementary way, in which various forms of raw data (either objective or subjective) collected to evaluate port performance can first be converted into and presented as fuzzy grades defined using linguistics terms with degrees of belief (DoBs) and second be combined using evidential reasoning to produce a port choice preference score. The method is applied to analyse the selection of major Northeast Asian (NEA) container ports from a shipping line’s perspective. The outcome, a port choice preference score, is calculated using evidential reasoning to directly synthesize the true estimation of the port with respect to each criterion and therefore, unlike a relative ranking index, keeps the ‘goodness’ of port evaluation, capable of benchmarking a specific port’s performance and monitoring the increase of its competitiveness in a longitude study with respect to an individual criterion or all the criteria as a whole.     

Hybrid simulated annealing and genetic algorithm for optimizing arterial signal timings under oversaturated traffic conditions

The implementation of system‐wide signal optimization models requires efficient solution algorithms that can quickly generate optimal or near‐optimal signal timings. This paper presents a hybrid algorithm based on simulated annealing (SA) and a genetic algorithm (GA) for arterial signal timing optimization. A decoding scheme is proposed that exploits our prior expectations about efficient solutions, namely, that the optimal green time distribution should reflect the proportion of the critical lane volumes of each phase. An SA algorithm, a GA algorithm and a hybrid SA‐GA algorithm are developed here using the proposed decoding scheme. These algorithms can be adapted to a wide range of signal optimization models and are especially suitable for those optimizing phase sequences with oversaturated intersections. To comparatively evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms, we apply them to a signal optimization model for oversaturated arterial intersections based on an enhanced cell transmission model. The numerical results indicate that the SA‐GA algorithm outperforms both SA and GA in terms of solution quality and convergence rate. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

共用车公司的新点子

共用车汽车租赁已经吸引了数以万计的城市青年加入拼车一族.如今,这场运动正在成为当下汽车消费的主流--就连赫兹租车和福特汽车也想参与其中.