The role of professional associations in shipping

This article is in three parts. The first covers the historical development of qualifying associations. The second covers the particular role of maritime institutions that include The Royal Institution of Naval Architects, The Institute of Marine Engineering Science and Technology and The Nautical Institute. The third and final section considers the future for maritime professional associations in the context of international shipping.     

Urban walkability considering pedestrians’ perceptions of the built environment: a 10-year review and a case study in a medium-sized city in Latin America

ABSTRACT

Numerous methodologies measuring walkability have been developed over the last years. This paper reviews the Walkability Index (WI) literature of the last decade (2009–2018) and highlights some limitations in the current approaches. Only a few studies have evaluated walkability in Latin America, mainly in big cities but not in medium and small-sized cities in the region, which present their own urbanisation dynamics, security issues, sidewalk invasion problems, and poor planning. Furthermore, most WIs in the literature use objective mesoscale variables to assess walkability in a given area. This paper contributes to filling these gaps by generating new evidence from a medium-sized city in Latin America to question if characteristics of the built environment encourage walking trips, as found in the literature, are transferable among regions. The study also proposes a novel index comprised of microscale and mesoscale built environment variables to assess walkability using virtual tools and considering users’ perceptions. The WI estimation relies on ranking probability models. The results of the case study suggest that subjective Security and Traffic Safety are the most crucial factors influencing walkability in these kind of cities, which is different from what is found in the literature from cities in developed countries where Sidewalk Condition and Attractiveness are the most important factors. Security appeared to be strongly associated with a subjective dimension, represented by the fear of crime or perceived risk for crime, instead of the actual occurrence of crimes. This result evidences the importance of the physical attributes of the real world and how they are captured, judged, and processed by pedestrians. Then, regional transferability of WIs needs to be done carefully. Finally, results in this paper highlight the importance of microscale built environment characteristics in the WI formulation in these cities. Results are in line with other research in some cities of the region, which found that microscale variables such as pavement quality and presence of obstacles on the sidewalks are relevant components to promote walkability.     

三王之战

<正>保时捷911GT3、GT3RS和GT2RS处于整个911车型性能的最顶端,它们三个对比谁会成为赢家却是—个耐人寻味的问题保时捷会将每一代911发挥的潜力都挖掘到极限,派生出各种不同取向的车型,但不会同时销售几种不同车型。所以有什么能比把991.2车系的三款顶尖车型——911GT3、GT2RS和GT3RS聚齐在英国Anglesey来一场测试更符合保时捷70周年纪念的主题呢?     

HATCH TRICK 王者归来

<正>后轮转向、减振器液压缓冲块、拖拽臂后悬架,雷诺运动/赛车部门Renault Sport推出的新一代Megane RS为钢炮提供了另外一种存在方式。这一次,本田Civic Type-R可得小心点了2017年法兰克福车展前几个月,雷诺运动/赛车部门Renault Sport把一小组记者召集到它藏在巴黎市郊、门面不大的总部所在地。记得Renault Sport的老板Patrice Ratti自信而且轻松地介绍着全新的     

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     

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.     

Mesoscale subduction at the Almeria–Oran front: Part 1: Ageostrophic flow

This paper presents a detailed diagnostic analysis of hydrographic and current meter data from three, rapidly repeated, fine-scale surveys of the Almeria–Oran front. Instability of the frontal boundary, between surface waters of Atlantic and Mediterranean origin, is shown to provide a mechanism for significant heat transfer from the surface layers to the deep ocean in winter. The data were collected during the second observational phase of the EU funded OMEGA project on RRS Discovery cruise 224 during December 1996. High resolution hydrographic measurements using the towed undulating CTD vehicle, SeaSoar, traced the subduction of Mediterranean Surface Water across the Almeria–Oran front. This subduction is shown to result from a significant baroclinic component to the instability of the frontal jet. The Q-vector formulation of the omega equation is combined with a scale analysis to quantitatively diagnose vertical transport resulting from mesoscale ageostrophic circulation. The analyses are presented and discussed in the presence of satellite and airborne remotely sensed data; which provide the basis for a thorough and novel approach to the determination of observational error.     

弯道激情

正保时捷在Gayman上用一台水平对置四缸机,替代了原来的水平对置六缸机,不知它还能否在比利牛斯山的山路上证明自己——它不比任何一位前辈逊色机舱内传来了机长广播的声音,"乘务员请注意,我们将在10分钟后降落"。紧接着Bing的一声,头顶上面的安全带指示灯亮起,我前面一位坐在过道旁边的先生刚好望向机尾的卫生间,脸色瞬间变得紧张起来,不知是应该起身前往还是等待降落,to pee or not to pee,纠结如此,想必他一定是一个英国人。     

Quantifying uncertainty in high-resolution coupled hydrodynamic-ecosystem models

Marine ecosystem models are becoming increasingly complex and sophisticated, and are being used to estimate the effects of future changes in the earth system with a view to informing important policy decisions. Despite their potential importance, far too little attention has been, and is generally, paid to model errors and the extent to which model outputs actually relate to real-world processes. With the increasing complexity of the models themselves comes an increasing complexity among model results. If we are to develop useful modelling tools for the marine environment we need to be able to understand and quantify the uncertainties inherent in the simulations. Analysing errors within highly multivariate model outputs, and relating them to even more complex and multivariate observational data, are not trivial tasks. Here we describe the application of a series of techniques, including a 2-stage self-organising map (SOM), non-parametric multivariate analysis, and error statistics, to a complex spatio-temporal model run for the period 1988–1989 in the Southern North Sea, coinciding with the North Sea Project which collected a wealth of observational data. We use model output, large spatio-temporally resolved data sets and a combination of methodologies (SOM, MDS, uncertainty metrics) to simplify the problem and to provide tractable information on model performance. The use of a SOM as a clustering tool allows us to simplify the dimensions of the problem while the use of MDS on independent data grouped according to the SOM classification allows us to validate the SOM. The combination of classification and uncertainty metrics allows us to pinpoint the variables and associated processes which require attention in each region. We recommend the use of this combination of techniques for simplifying complex comparisons of model outputs with real data, and analysis of error distributions.     

拯救汽油机计划

正在这个倾心电动车的时代,马自达逆潮流而动,用全新的Skyactiv-X系列发动机证明内燃机时代还没有走到尽头。这一代全新机型将在2019年率先装配全新一代马自达3/Axela,我们受邀率先体验了这一新技术我想马自达一定会对自己每一分开销都精敲细打:一年160万的产销屋在这个巨无霸横行的世界上显得实在微小,因而每一份收获都来之不易。不过相比大众、丰田、现代或是通用集团,马自达又拥有出色的独立性,一个确实存在但容易忽略的优势。正因为如此,它可以充分控制自己的技术路线。