Correction to: Shared school transportation: determinants of carpooling as children’s school travel mode in California

Transportation - In the online published article, in figure 2 a value is missing in column 4. The correct figure is given in this correction. The original article has been corrected.     

Shared school transportation: determinants of carpooling as children’s school travel mode in California

Transportation - Carpooling has potential as an alternative mode of school transportation along with other viable options, especially at a time when technology continues to increase our reliance...     

Influence of vehicular traffic on urban air quality – A case study of Hyderabad,India

In the present study, impact of vehicular traffic emissions on black carbon aerosol mass concentration, trace gases and ground reaching solar radiation were analyzed during nationwide truck strike of 5–12 January, 2009 over urban environment of Hyderabad, India. A significant reduction of about 57%, 60%, 40% and 50% was observed in black carbon, particulate matter, carbon monoxide and ozone respectively during nationwide truck strike period. Results of the study are important for source apportionment of pollutants as the strike created natural laboratory for studying the impact of diesel operated trucks on urban air quality.     

Optimal linear phase finite impulse response band pass filter design using craziness based particle swarm optimization algorithm

An efficient method is proposed for the design of finite impulse response (FIR) filter with arbitrary pass band edge, stop band edge frequencies and transition width. The proposed FIR band stop filter is designed using craziness based particle swarm optimization (CRPSO) approach. Given the filter specifications to be realized, the CRPSO algorithm generates a set of optimal filter coefficients and tries to meet the ideal frequency response characteristics. In this paper, for the given problem, the realizations of the optimal FIR band pass filters of different orders have been performed. The simulation results have been compared with those obtained by the well accepted evolutionary algorithms, such as Parks and McClellan algorithm (PMA), genetic algorithm (GA) and classical particle swarm optimization (PSO). Several numerical design examples justify that the proposed optimal filter design approach using CRPSO outperforms PMA and PSO, not only in the accuracy of the designed filter but also in the convergence speed and solution quality.     

Efficient clustering and simulated annealing approach for circuit partitioning

Circuit net list bipartitioning using simulated annealing technique has been proposed in the paper. The method converges asymptotically and probabilistically to global optimization. The circuit net list is partitioned into two partitions such that the number of interconnections between the partitions is minimized. The proposed method begins with an innovative clustering technique to obtain a good initial solution. Results obtained show the versatility of the proposed method in solving non polynomial hard problems of circuit net list partitioning and show an improvement over those available in literature.     

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针对具有模糊因数的多目标交通问题,提出了一种优先模糊目标规划方法。本文首先建立了模糊目标的隶属度函数,其次,将隶属度函数的最高度作为期望水平并引入了偏差变量,从而将隶属度函数转化为隶属度目标。通过最小化负偏差变量得到最满意解。对模糊目标不同优先级结构下的解进行了敏感性分析,并用欧氏距离函数确定了最佳的目标优先级结构,通过最小化后悔值达到决策区域理想点决策值,得到决策单元最满意解。最后,应用实例对本文方法进行分析验证。     

白藜芦醇对重症急性胰腺炎大鼠肝脏的保护作用

目的 探讨白藜芦醇对实验性重症急性胰腺炎(severe acute pancreatitis, SAP)大鼠肝功能的保护作用.方法 96只成年雄性SD大鼠随机分为假手术(sham operation, SO)组、重症急性胰腺炎(SAP)组、地塞米松(dexamethasone, DEX)治疗组和白藜芦醇(resveratrol, RES)治疗组.各组大鼠均于制模后3、6、12h采集标本.生化方法进行肝功能测定;酶联免疫吸附试验(enzyme linked immunosorbent assay, ELISA)测定血清TNF-α和IL-6含量;透射电镜观察胰腺和肝脏超微结构的变化;RT-PCR检测凋亡调控基因Bax、Bcl-2和caspase-3 mRNA表达;Western Blot检测凋亡调控基因Bax、Bcl-2、caspase-3和线粒体内细胞色素C蛋白的表达.结果 SAP组各时间点血清谷丙转氨酶(alanine aminotransferase, ALT)、谷草转氨酶(aspartate aminotransferase, AST)和总胆红素(total bilirubin, TBIL)水平均明显高于SO组(P＜0.05),RES组和DEX组肝功损害较SAP组明显降低(P＜0.05).RES组和DEX组TNF-α、IL-6含量均明显低于SAP组(P＜0.05).SAP组出现明显细胞肿胀、毛细血管淤血、血栓形成、线粒体肿胀和细胞凋亡等超微结构的变化,RES组和DEX组上述改变明显减轻.RES组Bax、caspase-3 mRNA表达显著低于SAP组(P＜0.05),Bcl-2 mRNA表达明显高于SAP组.Western blot 检测结果与RT-PCR结果一致.RES组各项指标与DEX组差异不显著(P＞0.05).结论 白藜芦醇可以降低SAP大鼠肝细胞凋亡的发生,从而起到减轻SAP介导的肝脏功能损伤的作用.     

Real world driving cycle for motorcycles in Edinburgh

Knowledge of the driving cycle is an important requirement in the evaluation of exhaust emissions. Data were collected from trips performed on five routes between the home addresses in the surrounding areas and place of work at Napier University in Edinburgh. A real world Edinburgh motorcycle driving cycle (EMDC) is developed for each of the urban and rural roads, using this data. Forty-four trips were made on the routes in both urban and rural areas. We assess motorcycle speed, percentage time spent in cruise, accelerations, decelerations and idling and their statistical validity over trip lengths. The results show that EMDC has a cycle length of 770 and 656 s for urban and rural trips, which are higher than those of the European Commission’s driving cycle for cars used for emission estimations of motorcycles. Time spent in acceleration and deceleration modes of EMDC are found to be significantly higher than in other driving cycle studies, reflecting diverse driving conditions in Edinburgh.     

12毫米厚铝合金板的搅拌摩擦焊研究(英文)

Most of the investigations regarding friction stir welding(FSW)of aluminum alloy plates have been limited to about 5 to 6mm thick plates.In prior work conducted the various aspects concerning the process parameters and the FSW tool geometry were studied utilizing friction stir welding of 12 mm thick commercial grade aluminum alloy.Two different simple-tomanufacture tool geometries were used.The effect of varying welding parameters and dwell time of FSW tool on mechanical properties and weld quality was examined.It was observed that in order to achieve a defect free welding on such thick aluminum alloy plates,tool having trapezoidal pin geometry was suitable.Adequate tensile strength and ductility can be achieved utilizing a combination of high tool rotational speed of about 2000 r/min and low speed of welding around 28 mm/min.At very low and high dwell time the ductility of welded joints are reduced significantly.     

Multi-response optimization of diesel engine performance parameters using thumba biodiesel-diesel blends by applying the Taguchi method and grey relational analysis

This paper presents an experimental study that involves an application of the Taguchi method and grey relational analysis to determine the optimum factor level to obtain optimum multiple-performance characteristics of a diesel engine run with different low-percentage thumba biodiesel-diesel blends. Four factors, namely, low-percentage thumba biodiesel-diesel blend, compression ratio, nozzle opening pressure and injection timing were each considered at three levels. An L₉ orthogonal array was used to collect data for various engine performance- and emission-related responses under different engine loads. The signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio and grey relational analysis were used for data analysis. The results of the study revealed that the combination of a blend consisting of 30% thumba biodiesel (B30), a compression ratio of 14, a nozzle opening pressure of 250 bar and an injection timing of 20° produces maximum multiple performance of a diesel engine with minimum multiple emissions from the engine.