Multimodal transport in the new millennium

Consignors of goods in international trade want their containers to move door to door whether by land, sea or air — smoothly, seamlessly and at predictable cost. What they actually get from the law is at best a jerky roller coaster: a series of contracts, one for each mode or stage of the journey, contracts with various people and with liability that varies too. All agree that the law should change but attempts to agree on an entirely new multimodal regime have failed. Recently attempts have been not to start again but to expand an existing and established regime. The latest of these, the UNCITRAL draft, is essentially maritime: it applies to the sea phase but and goes further to apply door to door except when its path is blocked by compulsory unimodal law. Has Venus at last arisen from the waves? And what will happen when Beauty meets the Beast in the form of CMR? This article addresses the problems that will be encountered by an ambitious amphibious instrument of this kind. — problems of integration, of compatibility with local legal culture, and of methodology.     

LD-pumped Ho, Tm： YLF microchip laser

A simple rate equation model for 2μm Tm, Ho:YLF laser is given to study laser dynamics. Under low pump power, the explicit formulae for the threshold pump power and the relation between output power and incident power are obtained. The present model provides a straightforward procedure to design the laser resonator and the optical coupling system for optimization. At the same time, the experimental results are reported. At room temperature the slope efficiency is 22.4% and the typical lasing threshold is about 328mW. The theory is in good agreement with experiment.     

New technology and maritime training in the 21<Superscript>st</Superscript> century: Implications and solutions for MET institutions

This paper examines the impact of new technology on MET institutions in the 21^st century and discusses to what extent global MET institutions can enhance and enrich traditional practices through access to new technology and the use of innovative teaching and assessment methods within a sustainable and achievable framework. It notes the diverse standards and access to new technology by MET institutions across the globe and discusses the implications for them if they are to remain competitive and viable. The paper concludes that maritime institutions can benefit from the use of new technology, but only through rational planning and sustainable staged growth. A series of continua of technical development is provided to assist institutions, from the smallest to the largest, to plan for technical development and growth in a rational and feasible way.     

Dynamic analysis of multibodies system with a floating base for rolling of ro-ro ship caused by wave and slip of heavy load

Common effect of wave and slip of internal heavy load will make rolling of the roll-on ship serious. This is one of the important reasons for overturn of ro-ro ships. The multibodies System with a floating base is composed of ro-ro ship and slipping heavy load. This paper takes the rolling angle of the ship and the transverse displacement of the heavy load on desk as two freedoms. Making use of analysis of apparent gravitation and apparent buoyaney, the wave rolling moment is derived. By use of dynamic method of multibodies system with a floating base, dynamic equations of the system are established. Taking a certain channel ferry as an example, a set of numerical calculation have been carried out for rolling response of the ship and displacement response of the slipping heavy load under common effect of synchro-slipping heavy loads and wave.     

Simulation study of plane motion of air cushion vehicle

This research is on horizontal plane motion equations of Air Cushion Vehicle (ACV) and its simulation. To investigate this, a lot of simulation study including ACV‘s voyage and turning performance has been done. It was found that the voyage simulation results were accorded with ACV own characteristic and turning simulation results were accorded with USA ACV‘s movement characteristic basically.     

Piracy and armed robbery against ships today

This paper sets out the nature, scale and geographical locations of attacks against vessels today. Numerous examples in the paper highlight the worldwide nature of these attacks, the violence and differences in modus operandi and targets. The information is drawn from the International Maritime Bureau’s (IMB) Piracy Reporting Centre in Kuala Lumpur. Against this background, it briefly discusses issues of definition and response, including some technological devices, which can help locate hijacked vessels and deter unlawful boarding. The paper concludes with some practical thoughts on dealing with international crime, the victims of which, through the nature of their work have to travel beyond national boundaries, and so do not always attract the support of and commitment from national governments and law enforcement agencies where the attacks take place.     

Inter-temporal variation in the travel time and travel cost parameters of transport models

The parameters for travel time and travel cost are central in travel demand forecasting models. Since valuation of infrastructure investments requires prediction of travel demand for future evaluation years, inter-temporal variation of the travel time and travel cost parameters is a key issue in forecasting. Using two identical stated choice experiments conducted among Swedish drivers with an interval of 13 years, 1994 and 2007, this paper estimates the inter-temporal variation in travel time and cost parameters (under the assumption that the variance of the error components of the indirect utility function is equal across the two datasets). It is found that the travel time parameter has remained constant over time but that the travel cost parameter has declined in real terms. The trend decline in the cost parameter can be entirely explained by higher average income level in the 2007 sample compared to the 1994 sample. The results support the recommendation to keep the travel time parameter constant over time in forecast models, but to deflate the travel cost parameter with the forecasted income increase among travellers and the relevant income elasticity of the cost parameter. Evidence from this study further suggests that the inter-temporal and the cross-sectional income elasticities of the cost parameter are equal. The average elasticity is found to be ?0.8 to ?0.9 in the present sample of drivers, and the elasticity is found to increase with the real income level, both in the cross-section and over time.     

在不同水质地区实地进行海洋生物膜对SS UNS S32760不锈钢腐蚀行为研究（英文）

In the presence of biofilms, stainless steels(SS) exhibits an increase in corrosion potential, called ennoblement. In the present study, the corrosion potential(Ecorr) behavior of the duplex SS UNS S32760 was recorded simultaneously with the in situ marine biofilm formation in two areas at Arraial do Cabo,Southeastern Brazil. The biofilm at Forno Harbor(an anthropogenically disturbed area) was characterized by higher relative abundances of Bacteria at day 2, followed by diatoms(especially Navicula sp.) on day 10 and dinoflagellates on day 18,whereas no clear trend was recorded at Cabo Frio Island(an undisturbed area). The ennoblement of Ecorr values was site-dependent. In a complementary laboratory assay, biofilms were removed and the Ecorr values registered in sterile conditions for the subsequent 10 days and corroborated in situ results. Understanding biofilms and SS interactions has important implications for materials science and engineering decisions as well as helping to fill in important gaps in this knowledge.     

Lubrication and tribology in seawater hydraulic piston pump

Water hydraulic systems have provoked major interest because of the human friendly and environmental safety aspects. Piston pump is one of the most frequently used hydraulic units in recent engineering technique. In water hydraulic piston pump, poor lubrication is more likely to happen than in oil hydraulic one because of difference in properties between water and oil. So there are some key problems such as corrosive wear and erosion, which are investigated briefly. Many new materials have been developed, which give longer life expectancies with water without corrosion and erosion. A new type of seawater hydraulic piston pumps with better suction characteristics had been developed at HUST. Much of this research has concentrated on new materials, structure and experiments, which are also specially introduced.     

Numeric-based XML labeling schema by generalized dynamic method

Most efficient indeces and query techniques over XML (extensible markup language) data are based on a certain labeling scheme, which can quickly determine ancestor-descendant and parent-child relationship between two nodes. The current basic labeling schemes such as containment scheme and prefix scheme cannot avoid relabeling when XML documents are updated. After analyzing the essence of existing dynamic XML labels such as compact dynamic binary string (CDBS) and vector encoding, this paper gives a common unifying framework for the numeric-based generalized dynamic label, which can be implemented into a variety of dynamic labels according to the different user-defined value comparison methods. This paper also proposes a novel dynamic labeling scheme called radical sign label. Extensive experiments show that the radical sign label performs well for the initialization, insertion and query operations, and especially for skewed insertion where the storage cost of the radical sign label is better than that of former methods.