The Mediterranean Sea, coastal and deep-sea signatures of climatic and environmental changes

At great scales of time and space, the dynamics of the Mediterranean Sea, a concentration basin, are mainly linked to its freshwater budget. This budget is subject to evolutions due to man's use of freshwater and to climatic changes affecting precipitation and/or evaporation. Marine dynamics and Atlantic, atmospheric and terrestrial inputs are strong constraints for the geochemical behaviour of the Mediterranean Sea. From measurements made during the last decades in the deep western water, it appeared that temperature, salinity, nutrients and trace metal concentrations were changing with time. In spite of its depth, the Mediterranean Sea looks like a coastal ocean, according to its coast length, watershed and number of inhabitants and to its fast response to climatic and environmental changes. The changes discovered in deep homogeneous waters are signatures of evolutions occurred in the surface layer. But in this layer and particularly in coastal waters, climatic and/or environmental trends may be masked by seasonal and interannual variabilities of not only physical and chemical characteristics but also climatic forcing or anthropic inputs. Analyses of river runoff, atmospheric inputs or climatic trends together with marine evolutions indicate constraints concerning probable changes in the coastal sea and/or in the surface water and processes involved at the interfaces. Moreover, changes observed in coastal or deep-water constitute new constraints for the modelling of the marine circulation and the transfer of matter.     

Notes on the internationalization process in the maritime sector

In this paper the author traces the evolution of state subsidization of national shipping enterprises, and analyses the processes whereby such enterprises are dependent (to an increasing extent as time passes) on international factors.     

轮缘等离子强化

随着铁路车轮轮缘等离子强化有效性讨论的不断深入，必须仔细研究该强化过程的一些特点和车轮强化后的使用效果。强化工作的问题之一就是要了解车轮轮缘在作强化之前的硬度值是多少。科研人员对此所作的试验表明：为了能使钢轨用钢和轮缘用钢相互间的接触疲劳寿命得到保证，其硬度值应该相似。因此，在讲轮缘强化硬度时必须明白，表面强化工艺会使得强化表面某些区域的局部硬度(显微组织)达到最大值。     

Some aspects of the structural design of a mat foundation for various soil conditions

There are several important structural design parameters in the analysis of a mat type structure for a jackup mobile offshore drilling unit. These consist of dimensions for the mat, soil foundation types, and structural loads. Methods for determining the proper dimension of the mat structure, modeling the structure and its loading cases, modeling the soil conditions and a method for identifying critical load cases for each element and load case is presented. By using a database approach for the finite element output for all of the various loading cases, a rational approach is presented which solves the problem of sorting and analyzing all of the elements and load cases, ensuring that all are included and none of the critical cases are missed.     

Designing personal rapid transit (PRT) networks

This paper presents a heuristic method for designing a PRT network. Because the PRT system operating characteristics and performance measures differ widely from those of conventional transit technologies, an algorithm for the PRT network design problem (NDP) is derived by using concepts from some current NDP algorithms. We minimize the sum of passenger travel time cost, construction cost, vehicle cost and operational costs, subject to an available budget of guideway, a maximum number of vehicles and given link capacities. Starting with a well-connected initial network, the algorithm eliminates and adds links iteratively as it searches for a near-optimal solution. If this solution satisfies the budget constraint, it is considered to be acceptable. Otherwise, additional links are deleted until a feasible near-optimal solution is obtained. The link elimination phase of the algorithm only considers half of the links at a time which greatly decreases computing time. None of the links in an acceptable solution will be overloaded.     

Shipping and investment incentives: a trilogy

Governments may often try to stimulate investment in their own country by altering the climate in which such decisions are made. They achieve this by means of fiscal and financial regimes which may offer investment incentives for particular forms of investment and/or favourable financial arrangements to facilitate the purchase of particular assets. This paper discusses the form which such incentives might take and considers the literature to examine how such incentives have been perceived by businessmen whose actions they are intended to influence.     

Car ownership and public transport use: Revisiting the interaction

At the beginning of the 1980s, it seemed that a consensus was emerging among researchers that public transport service levels, fares or quality had a small but possibly important effect on car ownership, and that this should be taken into account for those purposes where car ownership forecasts are used for developing policy on public transport or roads. Somehow, the findings faded away, and had little effect on policy thinking or on analytical techniques. The results of six surveys carried out in South Yorkshire over the period 1972 to 1991, during which there were extreme changes in public transport policy, tend to support a prima facie case for reopening the question. At the household level, car ownership rates are shown to be more volatile than is often assumed, especially in multiple car households. This volatility provides a context within which the quality of public transport provision appears to influence both the level of car ownership and the relationship between changes in the level of car ownership and changes in public transport use.     

A stochastic passenger loading model of airline schedule performance

The passenger loading problem is defined as that of determining the distribution of passengers that will be carried on each flight in a given market over the course of the day. This problem is stochastic in nature, and must take into account the fact that as some flights become booked up, passengers may spill to adjacent flights, or may choose not to fly on that airline. A precise model of the loading process is developed and solved using an efficient numerical procedure. Several approximations are introduced and tested which further improve the overall efficiency. The model represents a more rigorous solution approach than has appeared previously in the literature, and as such could be used to evaluate simpler approximations. It is fast enough, however, to be used as an interactive schedule evaluation and design tool.     

迎接高速公路时代—中国汽车相关技术问题的考察

中国正迎来高速公路时代，高速公路时代安全行车在技术因素方面涉及车辆的构造，道路设施与运行管理，在人的因素方面涉及驾驶习惯。保养与车检，安全运行的宣传教育与管理等。     

Research on the Influence of Small Distance Subway Tunnel Passing through Buildings at Short DistanceEI北大核心

Research purposes: At present, the urban subway is developing rapidly in our country, among which there are many problems. This paper takes a seven-story frame structure office building as research object. In view of the phenomenon that the dome subsidence and the land subsidence rate exceed the early warning in the field construction of the left line tunnel, combing theoretical analysis with the MIDAS-GTS numerical simulation, we took the "building-stratum-tunnel" as the research object, analyzed the influence of small distance tunnel construction process of mine method on the adjacent buildings, and analyzed the influence difference of the construction sequence of the left and right lines. Finally we put forward the relevant engineering technical measures. Research conclusions:(1) The tunnel construction makes the building in the tensile zone, and the structure is easy to be damaged. When the structure is far away from the influence of the excavation, the order of tunnel excavation is not significant. (2) When the surrounding rock is broken and close to the building, it is better to excavate the tunnel far away from the side of the building. At the same time, we should pay attention to taking the reinforcement measures near the side of the building and the intermediate rock column. (3) The research results can be applied to the field of shield construction in subway, and have a good guiding effect on the shield tunnel passing through buildings at close distance. © 2018, Editorial Department of Journal of Railway Engineering Society. All right reserved.