Quantifying individuals’ trade-offs between privacy,liberty and security: The case of rail travel in UK

Public transport systems have been targets in several terrorist attacks, notably in recent years, resulting in tight security measures worldwide. However, individuals’ privacy and liberty often conflict with efforts towards safety and security, making it difficult to assess the implications of security measures balanced against the costs (e.g., citizens may be stopped, searched and asked to provide personal identification data to authorities without any particular reason). Henceforth, our research question asks, “to what extent would people sacrifice their right to privacy and liberty in exchange for potentially safer and more secure travel?” This paper uses a stated choice experiment to quantify individuals’ trade-offs between privacy and security within a real-life context, namely rail travel in the UK. Using a nationwide sample, the empirical analysis yields the importance of improvements in the security infrastructure and identifies areas of concern with regard to privacy and liberty controlling for travel related factors. Further, trade-offs across different security measures for rail travel are quantified in terms of individuals’ willingness-to-pay extra on top of the average ticket price.     

The biogeochemical cycling of methane in Ria de Vigo, NW Spain: Sediment processing and sea–air exchange

Methane (CH₄) concentrations were measured in the water column, in sediment porewaters, and in atmospheric air, in the Ría de Vigo, NW Spain, during both the onset (April 2003) and at the end of (September 2004) seasonal upwelling. In addition, CH₄ concentration and stable isotopic signatures (δ¹³CH₄) were measured in porewaters, and sediment methanogenesis and aerobic oxidation of CH₄ were determined in sediment incubations. Surface water column CH₄ (2 m depth) was in the range 3–180 nmol l^− 1 (110–8500% saturation) and followed a generally landward increase but with localised maxima in both the inner and middle Ría. These maxima were consistent with CH₄ inputs from underlying porewaters in which CH₄ concentrations were up to 3 orders of magnitude higher (maximum 350 μmol l^− 1). Surface water CH₄ concentrations were approximately three times higher in September than in April, consistent with a significant benthic CH₄ flux driven by enhanced sediment methanogenesis following the summer productivity maximum. CH₄ and δ¹³CH₄ in sediment porewaters and in incubated sediment slurries (20 °C) revealed significant sediment CH₄ oxidation, with an apparent isotopic fractionation factor (r_c) of  1.004. Using turbulent diffusion models of air–sea exchange we estimate an annual emission of atmospheric CH₄ from the Ría de Vigo of 18–44 × 10⁶ g (1.1–2.7 × 10⁶ mol). This estimate is approximately 1–2 orders of magnitude lower than a previous estimate based on a bubble transport model.     

Do new sources of traffic data make the application of Chaos Theory to traffic management a realistic possibility?

Current signal systems for managing road traffic in many urban areas around the world lack a coordinated approach to detecting the spatial and temporal evolution of congestion across control regions within city networks. This severely inhibits these systems’ ability to detect reliably, on a strategic level, the onset of congestion and implement effective preventative action. As traffic is a time-dependent and non-linear system, Chaos Theory is a prime candidate for application to Urban Traffic Control (UTC) to improve congestion and pollution management. Previous applications have been restricted to relatively uncomplicated motorway and inter-urban networks, arguably where the associated problems of congestion and vehicle emissions are less severe, due to a general unavailability of high-resolution temporal and spatial data that preserve the variability in short-term traffic patterns required for Chaos Theory to work to its full potential. This paper argues that this restriction can now be overcome due to the emergence of new sources of high-resolution data and large data storage capabilities. Consequently, this opens up the real possibility for a new generation of UTC systems that are better able to detect the dynamic states of traffic and therefore more effectively prevent the onset of traffic congestion in urban areas worldwide.     

业界老总支持旧船报废补贴

河北远洋运输集团董事局主席高彦明最近出面表态，力挺政府为淘汰旧船而推出的激励计划。作为国内航运业最受尊崇的老总之一，高提出，应该为老旧的远洋散货船提供同样的补贴。     

转移排队车辆控制尾气排放的应用实例

为了缓解苏格兰法夫（Fife）地区库珀（Cupar）镇的交通拥堵，减少关键区域的尾气排放，用S-Paramics模型进行测试。采取的措施是把排队车辆转移到道路宽阔且建筑物较矮的路段，使车辆尾气易于扩散。测试结果显示，该方法能显著减少关键区域的尾气排放量，而车辆行程时间基本保持不变。项目的评价标准不是基于传统的行程时间和车辆运营成本的节约，而是考虑了行人和当地商业的利益。     

Multi-fidelity optimization of a high-speed foil-assisted semi-planing catamaran for low wake

The wakes of high-speed passenger-only ferries that operated through Rich Passage, on the Seattle-Bremerton ferry route, caused beach erosion and damage to habitat. A task was initiated to design a low-wake high-speed vessel using multi-fidelity CFD based design optimization by using low-fidelity potential flow solvers for initial global design optimization and by using URANS solvers for high-fidelity tuning of the optimized design. This simulation based design process involved a close collaboration between ship designers, and hydrodynamics and CFD specialists, whose collective expertise guided the evolution of the design based on both hydrodynamic and structural aspects. The initial hull shape optimization using potential flow code was carried out by blending three different initial concepts provided by the designers. Subsequently, URANS was used to evaluate the potential flow optimized hull and to further optimize the hull configuration parameters, namely, the centre-of-gravity, demihull spacing, foil location, foil angle and slenderness ratio at different displacement conditions. The URANS based configuration optimization also took into account the far field wakes’ energy spectrum with an objective of reducing the energetic, low frequency far field wakes which are associated with beach flattening on the mixed sand and gravel beaches. Calculation of the far field wake using URANS would require an unfeasibly large domain size; therefore, a Havelock code with a source distribution matching the URANS calculated near field wave elevation was used to propagate the wakes into the far field. The end result of the optimization was a design with significantly reduced far field wake, which is currently being built for experimental testing.     

大众手工作业——试架大众辉腾

每年大众出品的汽车数以万计,但其中只有极少的数量由资深技师们手工打造。这些手工产品只为那些喜欢低调的大佬们准备,精细的工艺,宽敞的空间,以及高科技的配置让这些“手工作业”成为大众的招牌,它们有一个名字——辉腾。     

Revisiting the notion of induced traffic through a matched-pairs study

In investigating the question of the existence of "induced demand" in connection with highway expansion projects, Hansen et al. (1993) studied eighteen California state highway segments whose capacities had been improved in the early 1970s. For the present study, these segments were paired with control segments that matched the improved segments to unimproved ones with regard to facility type, region, approximate size, and initial volumes and congestion levels. Taking annual data for average daily traffic (ADT) and design-hour-traffic-to-capacity (DTC) ratios during the 21 years 1976–1996, three approaches were used to compare growth rates between the improved and unimproved segments: overall growth comparisons for the matched pairs, repeated measures analysis, and analysis of matched mean profiles. We found the growth rates between the two types of segments to be statistically and practically indistinguishable, suggesting that the capacity expansions, in and of themselves, had a negligible effect on traffic growth over the period studied. Reasons for the differences between these results and those of aggregate cross-sectional models finding a significant induced demand effect are discussed. Our analyses suggest that the aggregate models may overestimate induced traffic due to the attribution of at least a fraction of the observed traffic growth to "induced demand" rather than to some of the confounding factors which were not controlled for in such studies. At the same time, it is noted that the traffic induced by capacity expansion may in certain circumstances be larger than that observed in the present study, with the effect of new highway construction on traffic growth being a prime candidate for scrutiny in this regard. The results of this study nonetheless suggest that, for existing facilities, the size of the induced-traffic effect that can be attributed to capacity enhancements may be sufficiently small that its detection in a case-control study would be difficult, if not impossible, without a substantially larger sample size.     

CFD validation studies for a high-speed foil-assisted semi-planing catamaran

This paper details the CFD validation studies carried out as a prerequisite for multi-fidelity CFD-based design optimization of high-speed passenger-only ferries aimed at reducing far-field wake energy that causes beach erosion. A potential flow program (WARP) and a URANS program (CFDSHIP) were validated using full-scale measurements of resistance, sinkage, trim, and far-field wake train obtained over a wide range of speeds for two high-speed semi-planing foil-assisted catamarans: Spirit (LOA-22 m) and 1060 (LOA-17 m). This study posed a unique combination of challenges for CFD modeling: the foil appended geometry required complicated surface overset grids, the effect of the waterjet and wind resistance had to be modeled, and a method had to be devised to extrapolate the calculated near-field elevation to get the far-field wake train using Havelock sources. A more concentrated effort was applied to the URANS verification and validation which forms the focus of this paper. The results show that URANS is able to accurately predict the resistance and motions for both vessels when coupled with models that account for the propulsors and air resistance. The overall accuracy of URANS for the performance analysis of the foil-assisted, semi-planing catamarans was adequate to warrant its use as a tool for subsequent design and optimization of a new vessel with significantly reduced wakes.     

达喀尔，我来了 威麟年队征战达喀尔拉力赛侧记

“我可带你一起去敲击冒险之门，但打开这扇命运挑战之门的是你自己。”——泽利·萨宾。作为达喀尔拉力赛的创始人，泽利·萨宾毫不讳言这项赛事的艰难。2010年，对于中国达喀尔迷来说更值得期待，因为第一次。中国车来了……