Tonnage tax: is it working?

The introduction of the tonnage tax for shipping companies has been a response to the declining fleets in many European countries. There are strategic and commercial reasons why a maritime presence is desirable, not least of which is to maintain an important skill base. Although regimes have differed they all offer some form of preferential rates of tax for those ships on the register. In certain cases this tax subsidy has been linked to a requirement to train seafarers, notably in the UK. This article analyses the impact of the tonnage tax system and its success in achieving its objectives of fleet expansion and employment with particular reference to the UK.     

日本汽车厂商今夏面临紧要关头

不用在意美国之外的最新汽车销售数据;在美国市场,日本汽车生产商正开始获得领先于美国同行的一些重大优势。     

State estimation in roll dynamics for commercial vehicles

Accurate lateral load transfer estimation plays an important role in improving the performance of the active rollover prevention system equipped in commercial vehicles. This estimation depends on the accurate prediction of roll angles for both the sprung and the unsprung subsystems. This paper proposes a novel computational method for roll-angle estimation in commercial vehicles employing sensors which are already used in a vehicle dynamic control system without additional expensive measurement units. The estimation strategy integrates two blocks. The first block contains a sliding-mode observer which is responsible for calculating the lateral tyre forces, while in the second block, the Kalman filter estimates the roll angles of the sprung mass and those of axles in the truck. The validation is conducted through MATLAB/TruckSim co-simulation. Based on the comparison between the estimated results and the simulation results from TruckSim, it can be concluded that the proposed estimation method has a promising tracking performance with low computational cost and high convergence speed. This approach enables a low-cost solution for the rollover prevention in commercial vehicles.     

动力需求决定未来技术：霍尼韦尔（中国）有限公司首席战略协调技术服务经理

关于涡轮增压器的技术与市场 M：和自然吸气发动机以及采用机械增压器的发动机相比,同排量的涡轮增压发动机有哪些特点和优势？劣势呢？     

伟大的希冀

<正>阿斯顿马丁期望全新Vantage能够成功,但它需要先争得几个不可小觑的竞争对手的同意,比如奥迪R8 V10 Plus、迈凯轮540C和保时捷911 Carrera 4 GTS终于,我必须要感叹一声,终于开上了阿斯顿马丁Vantage。之前无论是在北极圈冰面上工程车的测试还是葡萄牙盛大发布会上的体验都像是被别人刻意安排好的节目。不能否认,Vantage在柏油路面上确实快得惊人,在赛道上又可以随心漂移,但仅凭这两项很难让人对于     

A utility-theory analysis of automobile speed under uncertainty of enforcement

Highway automobile speed and uncertain enforcement of the speed limit are introduced into a standard household utility model having time and income constraints. Due to uncertainty, expected utility is maximized to obtain the optimal speed (in excess of the speed limit). The optimal amounts of all other commodities and travel are also obtained. The key feature of the model is the risk attitude of the driver and the effect on optimal speed of such attitude. A related feature is the effect of risk attitude on the amount of speed self-insurance. An important finding is that the risk avert (seeking, neutral) driver charges himself an insurance premium that is larger than (smaller than, equal to) what is actuarially sufficient. The relationship between speed, risk attitude, and efficient cost of automobile travel is developed and implications are explored. A parametric analysis is conducted to establish the effect on optimal speed (and other variables) of changes in such policy instruments as the price of gasoline, the probability of being caught exceeding the speed limit, the unit speed fine, and the speed limit. Policy implications of the theoretical results are part of the conclusions.     

A model of stoppings on urban bus routes

The amount of time required to pick up and discharge passengers is an important issue in the planning and modeling of urban bus systems. Several past studies have employed models of this component of bus travel time which are based, in part, on a model of the number of stoppings the bus makes to pick up or discharge passengers. Most past versions of this model have assumed that expected demand does not vary from stop to stop or from trip to trip, but that the number of passengers demanding service at any given stop during any given trip follows a Poisson distribution. An alternative model is derived, based on the assumption that expected demand varies among stops and times of day but is fixed from day to day at any given stop and time of day. Boarding and alighting survey data are used to verify that the “average-demand” Poisson model consistently overestimates the number of stoppings and to calibrate an approximate version of the alternative model. A stop-spacing optimization model previously developed by Kikuchi and Vuchic is reevaluated using the alternative stopping model in place of the average demand model used in the original version. The results are found to be considerably different, thus indicating that transit route optimization models are sensitive to the way in which stopping processes are modeled.     

Systematic variability in repetitious travel

The focus of this paper is the degree to which day-to-day variability in the individual's travel pattern has a systematic, or nonrandom, component. We first review the different sources of variability in travel, emphasizing the difference between between-individual and within-individual variation and the implications of this difference for travel analysis. After discussing the impact of measurement (i.e. the way in which travel behavior is measured) on the study of repetition and variability, we use the Uppsala data to examine the level of systematic variability in an individual's longitudinal travel record. The analysis focuses on two questions:

- How well does observation over one week capture longer-term (five-week) travel behavior; in other words, is behavior highly repetitive from week to week?

- How systematic is within-individual variability; in other words, are certain stops distributed over the five-week record in a nonrandom, that is either regular or clustered, fashion?

Using measures of travel that include more than one stop attribute (e.g. activity, mode, time of day, and location), we found that:

- A seven-day record of travel does not capture most of the separate behaviors exhibited by the individual over a five-week period, but it does capture, for most people, a good sampling of the person's different typical daily travel patterns.

- Whereas a considerable portion of intraindividual variability is systematic (nonrandom), clustering is a more important source of nonrandom variation than is regularity.

The results suggest that behavior does not follow a weekly cycle closely enough for a one-week travel record to measure the longer-term frequency with which the individual makes certain stops or to assess the level of day-to-day variation present in the individual's record. Because these results are likely to reflect the particular measures of behavior we used, one conclusion of this study is the need for other studies that replicate the aims of this one but use a variety of other travel measures. Only through such additional work can we truly assess the sensitivity of our findings to measurement techniques.     

A regression model for bus running times in suburban areas of winnipeg

To plan new bus routes in suburban areas, expected bus running times on these routes are needed. Using most readily available relevant variables, a regression model is developed for estimating bus running times. The model is conceptually reasonable and it was tested using data other than that used for estimation.