Factors associated with home-based e-working and e-shopping in Nanjing,China

The widespread adoption of information and communication technology has facilitated frequent e-activities in people’s daily life. From the perspective of individual’s time use on e-working and e-shopping at home, this paper aims to enhance our understanding of the function of home beyond a living space for family life. Using a household survey of 608 full-time paid employees who conducted e-activities at home in Nanjing, China, we investigated the characteristics and patterns of home-based e-working and e-shopping. Only 7.9% of the respondents neither e-shopped nor e-worked at home. We find that the socio-demographic context, Internet use habits, attitudes towards e-working/e-shopping, and geographical accessibility have influenced the patterns of home-based e-working and e-shopping. The results indicate that the rich e-activities taking place at home have changed the time use at home and reinforced the function of home as a multifunctional hub.     

Relationship between well-being and daily time use of elderly: evidence from the disabilities and use of time survey

According to US Census Bureau, the number of individuals in the age group above 65 years is expected to increase by more than 100% from the year 2000 to 2030. It is anticipated that increasing elderly population will put unforeseen demands on the transportation infrastructure due to the atypical mobility and travel needs of the elderly. Consequently, transportation professionals have attempted to understand the travel behavior of the elderly including the trip frequency, trip distance and mode choice decisions. Majority of the research on elderly travel behavior have focused on the mobility outcomes with limited research into understanding the tradeoffs made by this population segment in terms of their in-home and out-of-home activity engagement choices. The goal of the current research is to contribute to this line of inquiry by simultaneously exploring the daily activity engagement choices of the elderly Americans including their in-home and out-of-home activity participation (what activities to pursue) and time alloocation (duration of each activity) decisions while accounting for the temporal constraints. Further, the study attempts to explore the relationship between physical and subjective well-being and daily activity engagement decisions of the elderly; where subjective well-being is derived from reported needs satisfaction with life and different domains of it. To this end, data from the Disabilities and Use of Time survey of Panel Study of Income Dynamics was used to estimate a panel version of MDCEV model. In addition to person- and household-level demographic variables, activity participation and time use choices of elderly were found to vary across different levels of reported physical and subjective well-being measures. The model estimation results were plausible and provide interesting insights into the activity engagement choices of the elderly with implications for transportation policy development. Among other socio-demographic variables, living arrangements (living with family versus in elderly homes) were found to have significant influence on how people participate into different in-home versus out-of-home activities. For example, elderly living in the elderly home were found to participate more into out-of-home activities compared to people living with families. Elderly with disabilities were found to compensate lower participation into out-of-home activities with more participation into in-home activities. Considerable heterogeneity was observed in time engagement behavior of the elderly across reported levels of satisfaction with finance, job and cognitive needs. For example, elderly expressing high satisfaction with job was found to spend less time in in-home social activities. Elderly reporting higher satisfaction with finance were found to spend more time into OH social and shopping activities.     

蒸发波导环境下海上超视距通信应用研究

提出不同条件下蒸发波导预测方法:基于水文气象条件的海上舰艇蒸发波导预测模型选择方法和基于GPS信号利用贝叶斯正则化BP神经网络反演蒸发波导的方法;结合舰艇微波频段通信模式及电磁波在蒸发波导环境下的传输损耗,研究蒸发波导环境下海上超视距通信,定量估算出最大有效通信距离,仿真结果表明蒸发波导环境下微波频段通信可达视距范围之外;研究超视距通信电磁盲区分布特征及影响因素;建立蒸发波导环境下舰艇超视距通信模型及应用流程.结合实际海上通信需求,提出蒸发波导环境下舰艇海上超视距通信应用.     

基于粒子群算法的水下多元线阵阵形有源校正方法

针对存在阵元位置误差的水下多元线阵,提出一种基于粒子群优化算法的远场有源阵形校正方法.该方法选用2个辅助源分时工作方式,利用无条件最大似然方位估计算法构建目标函数,并通过粒子群算法对阵元位置进行寻优.利用该方法对均匀线阵进行性能仿真实验.结果表明:该方法稳健性好、校正精度高,具有一定的应用前景.     

基于LabVIEW的IRIG-B码实时采集与解析方法

授时设备是现代舰船噪声综合测试系统的重要组成部分.本文提出一种LabVIEW平台下的授时设备IRIG-B码采集解析方法.首先利用授时设备产生的秒脉冲作为触发信号控制采集设备采集IRIG-B码,然后对IRIG-B码进行门限判别预处理,再与位置识别标志比对提取信号端点,最后将IRIG-B码与移位寄存器进行移位比对,识别码字以及解析时间信息.试验结果表明,该方法能够有效解决IRIG-B码实时采集解析问题,具有定时精度高、软件开销小、抗电磁干扰能力强等优点,可应用于授时设备的开发设计、工作状态监测、信号质量评估等.     

东海涌浪环境下大型起重船吊装组块耦合运动响应数值模拟研究

我国东海海洋环境复杂,经常出现小波高、长周期的涌浪.长周期涌对系泊大型起重船吊装海洋平台上部组块影响比较大,尽管涌的波高较小,但是,吊物组块运动幅度明显比同等波高海况时的要大,严重影响了海洋平台的安装施工效率和进度,甚至威胁作业安全.本文采用水动力势流软件,建立系泊-大型起重船(包括吊臂)-索具-大型组块吊物的耦合运动模型,研究复杂涌浪环境下耦合系统运动响应特性及其机理,并开展了参数敏感性分析,讨论对耦合响应影响因素.最后,对东海涌浪情况下起重安装施工,提出了降低吊装组块运动响应的建议措施.     

回汽技术在船舶换向中的应用研究

船舶蒸汽动力装置中设置的倒车汽轮机,一般情况下只在船舶倒车工况时工作.为了克服船舶换向过程中锅炉超压的问题,应充分利用倒车汽轮机和回汽控制技术.本文以大型船舶蒸汽动力装置为研究对象,通过机理分析建立其数学模型,提出一种具有回汽控制的机炉协调控制方案,并对换向过程进行动态仿真.仿真结果表明使用回汽控制的机炉协调控制方式的主蒸汽压力偏差相对于不使用回汽控制的协调控制方式减小了1%,主蒸汽压力更稳定.可以得到结论,使用具有回汽控制的机炉协调控制方式可以解决换向过程中锅炉超压的问题.     

Evaluating air emission inventories and indicators from cruise vessels at ports

This paper provides an estimation of air emissions (CO₂, NO_X, SO_X and PM) released by cruise vessels at the port level. The methodology is based on the “full bottom-up” approach and starts by evaluating the fuel consumed by each vessel on the basis of its individual port activities (manoeuvring, berthing and hoteling). The Port of Barcelona was selected as the site at which to perform the analysis, in which 125 calls of 30 cruise vessels were monitored. Real-time data from the automatic identification system (AIS), factor emissions from engine certificates and vessel characteristics from IHS Sea-web database were also collected for the analysis. The research findings show that the most appropriate indicators are inventory emissions per “port-time gross tonnage”, “port-time passenger” and “port time”. These emission indicators improve our understanding of cruise emissions and will facilitate the work that aims to estimate reliably and quickly the in-port ship emission inventories of cruise ports.     

An activity-based approach of investigating travel behaviour of older people

The paper presents the results of an investigation on daily activity-travel scheduling behaviour of older people by using an advanced econometric model and a household travel survey, collected in the National Capital Region (NCR) of Canada in 2011. The activity-travel scheduling model considers a dynamic time–space constrained scheduling process. The key contribution of the paper is to reveal daily activity-travel scheduling behaviour through a comprehensive econometric framework. The resulting empirical model reveals many behavioural details. These include the role that income plays in moderating out-of-home time expenditure choices of older people. Older people in the highest and lowest income categories tend to have lower variations in time expenditure choices than those in middle-income categories. Overall, the time expenditure choices become more stable with increasing age, indicating that longer activity durations and lower activity frequency become more prevalent with increasing age. Daily activity type and location choices reveal a clear random utility-maximizing rational behaviour of older people. It is clear that increasing spatial accessibility to various activity locations is a crucial factor in defining daily out-of-home activity participation of older people. It is also clear that the diversity of out-of-home activity type choices reduces with increasing age and older people are more sensitive to auto travel time than to transit or non-motorized travel time.     

Isolating high-priority metro and feeder bus transfers using smart card data

Fixed-rail metro (or ‘subway’) infrastructure is generally unable to provide access to all parts of the city grid. Consequently, feeder bus lines are an integral component of urban mass transit systems. While passengers prefer a seamless transfer between these two distinct transportation services, each service’s operations are subject to a different set of factors that contribute to metro-bus transfer delay. Previous attempts to understand transfer delay were limited by the availability of tools to measure the time and cost associated with passengers’ transfer experience. This paper uses data from smart card systems, an emerging technology that automatically collects passenger trip data, to understand transfer delay. The primary objective of this study is to use smart card data to derive a reproducible methodology that isolates high priority transfer points between the metro system and its feeder-bus systems. The paper outlines a methodology to identify transfer transactions in the smart card dataset, estimate bus headways without the aid of geographic location information, estimate three components of the total transfer time (walking time, waiting time, and delay time), and isolate high-priority transfer pairs. The paper uses smart card data from Nanjing, China as a case study. The results isolate eight high priority metro-bus transfer pairs in the Nanjing metro system and finally, offers several targeted measures to improve transfer efficiency.