Expert system to calculate the cofficient of friction : an approach to enhance traffic safety

Friction plays a key role in causing slipperiness as a low coefficient of friction on the road may result in slippery and hazardous conditions. Analyzing the strong relation between friction and accident risk on winter roads is a difficult task. Many weather forecasting organizations use a variety of standard and bespoke methods to predict the coefficient of friction on roads. This article proposes an approach to predict the extent of slipperiness by building and testing an expert system. It estimates the coefficient of friction on winter roads in the province of Dalarna, Sweden using the prevailing weather conditions as a basis. Weather data from the road weather information system, Sweden (RWIS) was used. The focus of the project was to use the expert system as a part of a major project in VITSA, within the domain of intelligent transport systems

Initiation into engineering : stability and change in gender orders

This article examines processes of doing gender during the initiation of students into engineering programs at university level in Sweden. The article draws on interviews with students, focusing on their understandings of gender. The aim is to explore difficulties with and challenges to traditional gender roles in an academic male dominated arena, by using theories of doing and undoing gender. The empirical material reveals the initiation period or ‘reception’ as a phenomenon both reinforcing and challenging traditional orders. The attempts to challenge norms meet resistance, revealing two paradoxes and one dilemma. In the first paradox the formal purpose of the reception (inclusion) is partly at odds with its informal consequence (exclusion of deviations). The second paradox concerns the contradictory effects of the reception. Even though the reception ensures participation of women, it reinforces existing hierarchies including gender inequality. This results in a dilemma, since in order to protect individual safety, there is a taboo on harassing women which then reproduces stable gender stereotypes. So while harassment taints the respect senior students must earn during the reception, the fact that female students exist in the engineering field challenges the established order and opens the way for change.