Rural areas in low-income countries often face severe poverty typically caused by insufficient accessibility to basic facilities. Improvements in rural roads are expected to reduce poverty although the mechanism has not been investigated sufficiently. This study empirically analyzes the impacts of rural road improvements implemented from 2012 to 2014 in Cambodia, highlighting local residents’ accessibility to local markets. This study assumes two causal relationships: rural road improvements have upgraded the accessibility and travel frequency to local markets, and the upgraded accessibility and travel frequency to local markets have led to a growth in local residents’ income. The hypotheses are statistically tested with a dataset developed through a questionnaire survey conducted in three areas in 2016. The dataset contains responses from 400 local residents to questions concerning their social attributes, livelihoods, travel modes, travel frequency, and time/cost of travels to the basic facilities. The quasi-experimental design incorporating a difference-in-differences design and an inverse possibility of treatment weighting approach revealed that the improvements in rural roads did not affect travel time nor travel cost but significantly enhanced travel frequency to local markets, and that an increase in the travel frequency to local markets and travel time savings significantly contributed to the households’ income growth. The results suggest that the improvement of seasonal reliability in accessing local markets through an introduction of all-weather roads could be critical to enhance household income, particularly in areas where agriculture is a leading industry and weather conditions are unstable across seasons.
Small, narrow commuter vehicles have attracted considerable interest in recent years as a means to increase the utilization of existing freeways and parking facilities. However, conventional narrow track vehicles are likely to have reduced stability against overturning during hard cornering. A possible solution to this problem lies in vehicles which tilt toward the inside of a turn. Two different ways to achieve this tilt will be analyzed. For direct tilt control (DTC) an actuator forces the upper part of the vehicle to tilt. Steering tilt control (STC) uses steering to control the tilt as is done by motorcycle or bicycle riders. At low speeds, only the DTC system is effective while at high speeds the STC offers less lateral acceleration for the passenger during transient cornering and may seem more natural. The two methods of control will be studied separately and it will be shown that even though the same steady state tilt can be achieved with either system, the transient behavior of the systems is very different. It also will be shown that it is possible to switch from one system to the other at an arbitrarily chosen speed with virtually no transient effects even when the vehicle is not in a steady state. Regardless of which control system is active, the driver simply communicates his desire to follow the road by moving the steering wheel and the control systems take care of the tilting either by using the tilt actuator or by actively steering the road wheels. Thus the driver does not need to leam how to stabilize the tilt mode of the vehicle. 相似文献
On March 26,2010 an underwater explosion(UWE)led to the sinking of the ROKS Cheonan.The official Multinational Civilian-Military Joint Investigation Group(MCMJIG)report concluded that the cause of the underwater explosion was a 250 kg net explosive weight(NEW)detonation at a depth of 6 9 m from a DPRK"CHT-02D"torpedo.Kim and Gitterman(2012a)determined the NEW and seismic magnitude as 136 kg at a depth of approximately 8m and 2.04,respectively using basic hydrodynamics based on theoretical and experimental methods as well as spectral analysis and seismic methods.The purpose of this study was to clarify the cause of the UWE via more detailed methods using bubble dynamics and simulation of propellers as well as forensic seismology.Regarding the observed bubble pulse period of 0.990 s,0.976 s and 1.030 s were found in case of a 136NEW at a detonation depth of 8 m using the boundary element method(BEM)and 3D bubble shape simulations derived for a 136kg NEW detonation at a depth of 8 m approximately 5 m portside from the hull centerline.Here we show through analytical equations,models and 3D bubble shape simulations that the most probable cause of this underwater explosion was a 136 kg NEW detonation at a depth of 8m attributable to a ROK littoral"land control"mine(LCM). 相似文献
Fully active ground vehicle suspensions which completely replace the passive spring and damper elements with a force generating actuator have required a significant amount of power. Alternative systems which retain compliant elements to handle high frequency isolation but include active elements to control the vehicle body attitude have been developed to reduce the power requirements. These suspensions are called “low bandwidth” or “fast load leveler” systems and they often incorporate semi-active dampers which produce high frequency controllable forces with low power requirements. Here, two contrasting attitude control systems are studied to show that actuator power can be significantly reduced if the actuator is used to vary a lever ratio instead of being used to compress the suspension spring directly. Both types of systems have been successfully implemented in prototype form. Bond graphs for idealized versions of the suspensions show clearly the significant differences in actuator power and energy requirements even though the abstract mathematical structures of the two systems are remarkably similar. Computer simulations confirm the analytical results. 相似文献