A road safety performance indicator for vehicle fleet compatibility

This paper discusses the development and the application of a safety performance indicator which measures the intrinsic safety of a country's vehicle fleet related to fleet composition. The indicator takes into account both the ‘relative severity’ of individual collisions between different vehicle types, and the share of those vehicle types within a country's fleet. The relative severity is a measure for the personal damage that can be expected from a collision between two vehicles of any type, relative to that of a collision between passenger cars. It is shown how this number can be calculated using vehicle mass only. A sensitivity analysis is performed to study the dependence of the indicator on parameter values and basic assumptions made. The indicator is easy to apply and satisfies the requirements for appropriate safety performance indicators. It was developed in such a way that it specifically scores the intrinsic safety of a fleet due to its composition, without being influenced by other factors, like helmet wearing. For the sake of simplicity, and since the required data is available throughout Europe, the indicator was applied to the relative share of three of the main vehicle types: passenger cars, heavy goods vehicles and motorcycles. Using the vehicle fleet data from 13 EU Member States and Norway, the indicator was used to rank the countries’ safety performance. The UK was found to perform best in terms of its fleet composition (value is 1.07), while Greece has the worst performance with the highest indicator value (1.41).

The interconnectedness of ageing:does the convoy principal apply?

This is an excerpt from the content: The convoy principal states that any system is only as functional as its ‘slowest’ unit. As organisms are made up of interconnected networks of physiological systems, it is possible that this principle applies to the biology of ageing. Often biogerontology will focus either on organismal ageing (mechanisms associated with increased longevity of a lower model organism for example), ageing of an individual organ system (such as the cardiovascular/musculoskeletal/immune) or ageing at the cellular level (from telomere length to cellular senescence, with many different cell types being studied) without considering the interconnectedness between the three and importantly, between the separate units of the convoy; the different organ systems. Conceptually, research that aims to identify ‘anti-ageing’ therapies is often deemed to be reaching for a panacea that will arrest or slow down the ageing process as a whole, whereas a more realistic aim is to first identify how we can improve the perfor ...

Adaptive control of hybrid battery energy storage systems under capacity fade

There is an increasing call for applications which use a mixture of batteries. These hybrid battery solutions may contain different battery types for example; using second life ex-transportation batteries in grid support applications or a combination of high power, low energy and low power, high energy batteries to meet multiple energy requirements or even the same battery types but under different states of health for example, being able to hot swap out a battery when it has failed in an application without changing all the batteries and ending up with batteries with different performances, capacities and impedances. These types of applications typically use multi-modular converters to allow hot swapping to take place without affecting the overall performance of the system. A key element of the control is how the different battery performance characteristics may be taken into account and the how the power is then shared among the different batteries in line with their performance. This paper proposes a control strategy which allows the power in the batteries to be effectively distributed even under capacity fade conditions using adaptive power sharing strategy. This strategy is then validated against a system of three different battery types connected to a multi-modular converter both with and without capacity fade mechanisms in place.

Strategic innovation through outsourcing:the role of relational and contractual governance

There is growing evidence that client firms expect outsourcing suppliers to transform their business. Indeed, most outsourcing suppliers have delivered IT operational and business process innovation to client firms; however, achieving strategic innovation through outsourcing has been perceived to be far more challenging. Building on the growing interest in the IS outsourcing literature, this paper seeks to advance our understanding of the role that relational and contractual governance plays in achieving strategic innovation through outsourcing. We hypothesized and tested empirically the relationship between the quality of client-supplier relationships and the likelihood of achieving strategic innovation, and the interaction effect of different contract types, such as fixed-price, time and materials, partnership and their combinations. Results from a pan-European survey of 248 large firms suggest that high-quality relationships between clients and suppliers may indeed help achieve strategic innovation through outsourcing. However, within the spectrum of various outsourcing contracts, only the partnership contract, when included in the client contract portfolio alongside either fixed-price, time and materials or their combination, presents a significant positive effect on relational governance and is likely to strengthen the positive effect of the quality of client-supplier relationships on strategic innovation.

Ginzburg-Landau turbulence in quasi-CW Raman fiber lasers

Fiber lasers operating via Raman gain or based on rare-earth-doped active fibers are widely used as sources of CW radiation. However, these lasers are only quasi-CW: their intensity fluctuates strongly on short time scales. Here the framework of the complex Ginzburg-Landau equations, which are well known as an efficient model of mode-locked fiber lasers, is applied for the description of quasi-CW fiber lasers. The vector Ginzburg-Landau model of a Raman fiber laser describes the experimentally observed turbulent-like intensity dynamics, as well as polarization rogue waves. Our results open debates about the common underlying physics of operation of very different laser types - quasi-CW lasers and passively mode-locked lasers. Fiber lasers operating via Raman gain or based on rare-earth-doped active fibers are widely used as sources of CW radiation. However, these lasers are only quasi-CW: their intensity fluctuates strongly on short time scales. Here the framework of the complex Ginzburg-Landau equations, which are well known as an efficient model of mode-locked fiber lasers, is applied for the description of quasi-CW fiber lasers. The vector Ginzburg-Landau model of a Raman fiber laser describes the experimentally observed turbulent-like intensity dynamics, as well as polarization rogue waves. Our results open debates about the common underlying physics of operation of very different laser types - quasi-CW lasers and passively mode-locked lasers.

Control of cascaded DC-DC converter-based hybrid battery energy storage systems - Part I:stability Issue

There is an emerging application which uses a mixture of batteries within an energy storage system. These hybrid battery solutions may contain different battery types. A DC-side cascaded boost converters along with a module based distributed power sharing strategy has been proposed to cope with variations in battery parameters such as, state-of-charge and/or capacity. This power sharing strategy distributes the total power among the different battery modules according to these battery parameters. Each module controller consists of an outer voltage loop with an inner current loop where the desired control reference for each control loop needs to be dynamically varied according to battery parameters to undertake this sharing. As a result, the designed control bandwidth or stability margin of each module control loop may vary in a wide range which can cause a stability problem within the cascaded converter. This paper reports such a unique issue and thoroughly investigates the stability of the modular converter under the distributed sharing scheme. The paper shows that a cascaded PI control loop approach cannot guarantee the system stability throughout the operating conditions. A detailed analysis of the stability issue and the limitations of the conventional approach are highlighted. Finally in-depth experimental results are presented to prove the stability issue using a modular hybrid battery energy storage system prototype under various operating conditions.

Impact of denial of service solutions on network quality of service

The Internet has become a universal communication network tool. It has evolved from a platform that supports best-effort traffic to one that now carries different traffic types including those involving continuous media with quality of service (QoS) requirements. As more services are delivered over the Internet, we face increasing risk to their availability given that malicious attacks on those Internet services continue to increase. Several networks have witnessed denial of service (DoS) and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks over the past few years which have disrupted QoS of network services, thereby violating the Service Level Agreement (SLA) between the client and the Internet Service Provider (ISP). Hence DoS or DDoS attacks are major threats to network QoS. In this paper we survey techniques and solutions that have been deployed to thwart DoS and DDoS attacks and we evaluate them in terms of their impact on network QoS for Internet services. We also present vulnerabilities that can be exploited for QoS protocols and also affect QoS if exploited. In addition, we also highlight challenges that still need to be addressed to achieve end-to-end QoS with recently proposed DoS/DDoS solutions. © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Identifying PV module mismatch faults by a thermography-based temperature distribution analysis

Photovoltaic (PV) solar power generation is proven to be effective and sustainable but is currently hampered by relatively high costs and low conversion efficiency. This paper addresses both issues by presenting a low-cost and efficient temperature distribution analysis for identifying PV module mismatch faults by thermography. Mismatch faults reduce the power output and cause potential damage to PV cells. This paper first defines three fault categories in terms of fault levels, which lead to different terminal characteristics of the PV modules. The investigation of three faults is also conducted analytically and experimentally, and maintenance suggestions are also provided for different fault types. The proposed methodology is developed to combine the electrical and thermal characteristics of PV cells subjected to different fault mechanisms through simulation and experimental tests. Furthermore, the fault diagnosis method can be incorporated into the maximum power point tracking schemes to shift the operating point of the PV string. The developed technology has improved over the existing ones in locating the faulty cell by a thermal camera, providing a remedial measure, and maximizing the power output under faulty conditions.

Interaction dynamics in small networks of nonlinear elements

We study a small circuit of coupled nonlinear elements to investigate general features of signal transmission through networks. The small circuit itself is perceived as building block for larger networks. Individual dynamics and coupling are motivated by neuronal systems: We consider two types of dynamical modes for an individual element, regular spiking and chattering and each individual element can receive excitatory and/or inhibitory inputs and is subjected to different feedback types (excitatory and inhibitory; forward and recurrent). Both, deterministic and stochastic simulations are carried out to study the input-output relationships of these networks. Major results for regular spiking elements include frequency locking, spike rate amplification for strong synaptic coupling, and inhibition-induced spike rate control which can be interpreted as a output frequency rectification. For chattering elements, spike rate amplification for low frequencies and silencing for large frequencies is characteristic