A ship's flag—who cares?

Over 60% of ocean trade moves in ships with convenience flags, those of Liberia, Panama, Cyprus and others. Semi-detached flags of Norway, France and the UK are another of the growing devices for avoiding rich-country taxes and labour costs. Shipowners and their customers see little hope for change (taxes and labour) in their political climates at home, but they need some workable governing structure to assure safety, payment of bills, protection of the environment and decent service. It follows that all maritime nations, especially the USA and Canada, should pay more attention to the creation and observance of International Conventions.     

Spatial price equilibrium sensitivity analysis

A direct approach to performing sensitivity analysis for a spatial price equilibrium problem with nonlinear transportation cost, commodity supply and commodity demand functions is presented. The first order derivatives of all decision variables with respect to parameter perturbations are shown to be expressable in a simple from which requires inversion of a matrix whose rank is the number of regions considered. A typical network usually involves several hundred regions and several thousand links; thus, by working with a matrix whose rank depends only on the number of regions rather than the number of links, computer storage is minimized and the necessary matrix inversion is made feasible, enabling us to perform the sensitivity analyses of very large nonlinear equilibrium problems. An example is presented to demonstrate application of the method. The approach taken here is also adaptable to the sensitivity analysis of Wardropian equilibrium problems.     

A spatial equilibrium port cargo projection model

A mathematical spatial programming model developed to analyse changes in international and hinterland commodity flows through a regional port system is applied to wheat shipments through the U.S. Pacific Northwest port system. Two scenarios, one focusing on a Chinese quarantine on wheat shipments from the Pacific Northwest and the other on possible closure of barge transportation on the Columbia-Snake River, illustrate the capacity of the model to evaluate the impacts of international and hinterland shocks on the regional port system.     

Alternative systems for urban transport in India

This paper is in the context of studying alternative systems of urban transport in India to determine the costs and performance not only for public transport systems but also for the total transport scenario (i.e. for all vehicles) such that the economic costs are inclusive of costs of time (conservatively), accidents and pollution. In view of inherent deficiencies and delays associated with a traditional transport planning process and its implementation, the paper develops quick response land-use transport planning models for Indian cities to enable integrated, cost-efficient strategies to be evolved, recognizing that urban transport is a function of urban size, form, structure, socio-economic base, etc. A simple statistically significant demand model identified from a basis of appropriate data represents the recommended demand model for Indian cities. This model can be then conveniently used to project trip volume for any Indian city in a future year. A simple gravity model is used to generate the trip assignment for hypothesized city sizes, forms and structures. The results provide a fairly reasonable approximation for the major corridor trip volumes and lengths in the context of the transport requirement for the metropolitan cities in India in 2001 and 2011 A.D. The GOI Study Group arising from the investigations reported in this paper and the discounted cash-flow method of analysis made clear overall recommendations in February 1987 for cities of various populations.     

自平衡法在文明特大桥桩基承载力试验中的应用

结合自平衡法在厦蓉高速公路文明特大桥钻孔灌注桩的承载力试验中的应用,详细阐释了自平衡测桩法的关键技术,总结了自平衡测试技术的施工经验,为同类桥梁的桩基试验提供了有益的借鉴。     

Assessing the CO2 impact of current and future rail track in the UK

This paper investigates the CO₂ impact of current and future UK rail track and estimates the material, process and transport emissions associated with construction, maintenance and end-of-life activities for designs at high and low traffic loads. Analysis shows that for current track configurations, track with concrete sleepers has the lowest CO₂ impact, followed by steel, hardwood and softwood. Several potential future rail track designs have been analysed including embedded rail and double and quadruple-headed rail. All future track designs have a lower impact than current designs, but this improvement is more marked at high traffic loads. Up to a 40% reduction in CO₂ impact could be achieved if the UK rail network was to move from conventional track design to a double-headed embedded rail design. Key levers for reducing the CO₂ impact of track are identified as service life extension, traffic load reduction and the selection of low impact track designs.     

磨粒的三维测量与重构

在铁谱分析中引入计算机三维测量与重构技术,通过使用改进拉普拉斯算子对在普通光学显微镜下拍摄到的磨粒连续图像序列进行清晰度分析来测量磨粒表面高度,重构磨粒三维图像.在普通光学显微镜下快速、方便地获取磨粒表面三维图,使铁谱分析技术不再仅限于对磨粒图像的二维分析.     

用动物模型定位、克隆复杂性疾病的易感基因:以类风湿关节炎动物模型为范例(续前)

3在大鼠关节炎模型上定位克隆易感基因在大鼠关节炎模型定位克隆易感基因,如图1所示:是将经典的纯系育种分离技术,结合congenic和重组系的建立,窄化易感区域,定位克隆基因,最终确定基因变异、功能变化和关节炎表型的关系[34-35]。具体步骤见图1。图1在大鼠关节炎模型上,定位克隆关节炎易感基因流程图Fig.1 Identification of susceptible genes to arthritis in rat models3.1选择亲代近交系,建立关节炎模型在数种关节炎模型中,用于进行基因定位克隆的模型有:胶原诱导性关节炎、油诱导性关节炎和Pristane诱导的关节炎。我们的研究工作主要…