The trade-off between trips and distance traveled in analyzing the emissions impacts of center-based telecommuting

Several travel indicators were compared between telecommuting (TC) days and non-telecommuting days for a sample of 72 center-based telecommuters in California. Distance traveled decreased significantly on TC days, with average reductions of 51 person-miles (58%) and 35 vehicle-miles (53%). When weighted by telecommuting frequency, average reductions of 11.9% in PMT and 11.5% in VMT were found over a five-day work week. Person-trips and vehicle-trips increased slightly (but not significantly) on TC days. This was due to statistically significant increases in commute trips by telecommuters (who more often went home for lunch on their TC days), partly counteracted by decreases in non-commute travel. The drive-alone mode share increased on TC days, both for all trips, and for commute trips in particular. Walking and biking shares also increased modestly on TC days, whereas shares of transit and ridesharing declined. Despite the increase in trip rates, TC-day reductions were found for all pollutants analyzed: 15% for total organic gas emissions, 21% for carbon monoxide, 35% for oxides of nitrogen, and 51% for particulate matter. The reduction in VMT more than compensated for the marginal increase in number of trips (and consequently, cold starts) on telecommuting days.     

Vulnerability of Coastal Resort Cities to Mean Sea Level Rise in the Mexican Caribbean

We evaluated the potential economic impacts of increasing sea level rise (SLR) along the Mexican Caribbean where there are major gaps in our understanding of the mechanisms controlling flooding duration and frequency associated to future ecological and economic impacts. We determined the negative economic impact of SLR on infrastructure in the largest urban centers (Cancun, Isla Mujeres, Playa del Carmen, Puerto Morelos and Cozumel) in the state of Quintana Roo (Mexico) that are considered the largest tourism “hot spots” (resort cities) in the country. The tourism industry in this coastal area injects >8 billion dollars year^?1 to the Mexican economy. Our conservative economic assessment regarding the impact of SLR, under a 1?m scenario for all coastal cities is $330 million USD. Further projections for worst scenarios (SLR >2 m) show a non-linear trend where the cost of inaction can reach up to $1.4 billion USD (2?m SLR scenario) and $2.3 billion USD (3?m SLR scenario). This potential loss of infrastructure, as construction cost, is staggering and represents a robust baseline to start evaluating with more detail future impacts of climate variability and change on the Mexican Caribbean coastline.     

Planning of integrated transit network for bus and LRT

An integrated approach is suggested for the planning and evaluation of mass transport systems which includes a bus network and LRT/RTS in urban areas. This approach involves a simplified procedure for determining mass transit demand, bus route network generation and evaluation, light or rapid transit corridor identification and its patronage determination in the presence of bus networks. Scheduling of a mass transportation system based on marginal ridership concept is also suggested for a given fleet size. All the three major components (demand estimation, route network generation and scheduling) iterate and interact each other with a feedback mechanism for the desired optimal solution in terms of performance indicators. Necessary interactive software packages for all the above subsystems have been developed.     

Multidisciplinary marine environmental database for the Aral Sea

Special unique database management and processing system (Oceanbase) have been developed to work with the large sets of multivariable interdisciplinary oceanographic and environmental data. AralBase system developed to work with the Aral Sea interdisciplinary data is a variety of the OceanBase. AralBase is a special database application with the expanded functionality designed to explore large multidisciplinary oceanographic and environmental data sets. It provides many possibilities for data loading, selection, access, processing, analysis, preview and export. The AralBase has a customizing user-friendly multi-windows interface. A user can create his/her own desktops and open and arrange as many windows as he/she needs.The most valuable feature of AralBase is the integration of many service tools that allow the user to carry out almost all data processing without any additional software. At the moment, the database is loaded with the oceanographic and meteorological data provided by the participants of the Inco-Copernicus Aral-Kum Project.The OceanBase system and the AralBase, in particular, are the very flexible systems, and they can be used in any environmental and oceanographic project or institution dealing with the water environment (ocean, lakes, rivers) data. The preloaded data bases with the Data Explorer system module can be distributed among the interested scientists and experts to simplify drastically their work with data.     

Fueling Control of Spark Ignition Engines

Presented in this paper is an adaptive, model based, fueling control system for spark ignition-internal combustion engines. Since the fueling control system is model based, the engine maps currently used in engine fueling control are eliminated. This proposed fueling control system is modular and can therefore accommodate changes in the engine sensor set such as replacing the mass-air flow sensor with a manifold air pressure sensor. The fueling algorithm can operate with either a switching type O 2 sensor or a linear O 2 sensor. The fueling control system is also parceled into steady state fueling compensation and transient fueling compensation. This feature provides the distinction between fueling control adaptation for transient fueling and steady state fueling. The steady state fueling compensation utilizes a feedforward controller which determines the necessary fuel pulsewidth after a throttle transient to achieve stoichiometry. This feedforward controller is comprised of two nonlinear models capturing the steady state characteristics of the fueling process. These models are identified from an input-output testing procedure where the inputs are fuel pulsewidth and mass-air flow signal and the output is a lambda signal. These models are adapted via a recursive least squares method to accommodate product variability, engine aging, and changes in the operating environment. The transient fueling compensation also utilizes a feedforward controller that captures the essential dynamic characteristics of the transient fueling operation. This controller is measured using a frequency domain system identification approach. This proposed fueling control system is demonstrated on a Ford 4.6L V-8 fuel injected engine.     

REGULATION OF THE INTERFERON－INDUCIBLE PROTEIN KINASEPKR AND2＇5＇ OLIGOADENYLATE SYNTHETASE BY A CATALYTICALLY INACTIVE PKR M

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REVERSAL OF THE DOUBLE－STRANDED－RNA－INDUCED INHIBITION OF PROTEIN SYNTHESIS BY A CATALYTICALLY INACTIVE MUTANT OF THE PROTEIN

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Modeling and analysis of a fuel-injection pump used in diesel engines

The Fuel-Injection Pump (FIP) used in diesel engine has a higher-pair cam-mechanism to pressurize the fuel for injection. This paper proposes a methodology to model FIP from a multibody Dynamics (MBD) perspective. The results from the model include the temporal behavior of driving torque, contact Hertz stress and reaction forces at various joints. The model helps the designer to assess the effect of various cam profiles, link parameters and other design variables. It is necessary that these parameters be optimized for future high pressure applications. For this purpose, a cam-mechanism with offset follower axis is analysed. Decoupled Natural Orthogonal Complement (DeNOC) matrices based algorithm is used to model FIP without and with offset cam-mechanism. The study shows that, the offset cam-mechanism allows reduction in the side-thrust, reaction forces, and the contact Hertz stress acting on the cam-follower interface. As a typical case, for an FIP working around a pressure value of 600 bar, an optimum offset value is found to be 9.5 mm and it shows a reduction of about 45% in side thrust values. To validate the modeling approach, experimental studies are performed on pump without and with offset cam-mechanism. Experimental results are in qualitative agreement with the theoretical model results.     

Short time-scale analysis of the NW Mediterranean ecosystem during summer–autumn transition: A 1D modelling approach

Modelling was used as a tool to better understand the physical and biological processes observed during the multidisciplinary cruise DYNAPROC 2 (DYNAmic of rapid PROCesses in the water column), which took place in the Ligurian Sea in September–October 2004. The aim of the cruise was to study the short time-scale physical and biological processes that occur when the ecosystem switches from summer oligotrophy to autumnal mesotrophy. In this study, we have tested two 1D physical–biological coupled models. The first was a classical model in which surface layer dynamics were obtained using the turbulent kinetic energy model of Gaspar [Gaspar et al., 1990]. The simulated food-web took into account ten state variables: three nutrients, three classes of phytoplankton, two classes of zooplankton and two types of detritus. The second model (called IDA, Isopycnals Depth Adjustment) was based on the initial one but it took into account the measured variations of isopycnals depths. The results showed that the IDA model most efficiently reproduced the observed ecosystem dynamics. We have therefore used the IDA model to show that physical processes observed during the cruise had a major effect on biological compartment, mainly on nano- and picophytoplankton.