Military jet fuel from shale oil

Investigations leading to a specification for aviation turbine fuel produced from whole crude shale oil are described. Refining methods involving hydrocracking, hydrotreating, and extraction processes are briefly examined and their production capabilities are assessed

College Students’ Personality Traits in Relation to Career Readiness

This study examined sixty-one Gettysburg College juniors and seniors (31 males, 30 females) to measure how the Big Five personality traits, and whether a student has Type D characteristics, determines if a student is career ready. We collected data through an in-person survey, with questions about personality traits, ambition, career readiness, and demographics. Regression was used to statistically analyze our first hypothesis. The results found that there is a significant positive association between conscientiousness and career readiness, but there is no significant association between extraversion and career readiness. For the second hypothesis, a mediation model was used. We found that ambition is not a mediator between Type D personality characteristics and career readiness. However, there is a significant positive association between Type D personality traits and career readiness. We explored whether gender plays a role in ambition responses. We concluded that there were no significant differences between males and females

Marginal Activity Access Cost (MAAC): a new indicator for sustainable Land Use/Transport (LUT) planning

The paper presents the ‘Marginal Activity Access Cost’, an accessibility indicator providing estimation in monetary terms of the impacts on mobility and on the environment of locating a single new activity in a specific zone of the urban area. In the first part of this paper, the new indicator is presented and compared to other accessibility indicators proposed in literature. In the second part, the MAAC is validated through an application to the urban area of Rome. The paper concludes with brief remarks on using the proposed accessibility indicator as index of performance for sustainable spatial planning

Competition on fast track: an analysis of the first competitive market for HSR services

This paper gives an overview of the dual effects of the opening, in Italy, of the new HSR line with a single operator (between 2005-2012) and the effects of a new operator entering the HSR market (2012-onward), on supply, demand and prices, thus inferring the effects of competition in this typically monopolistic market. The analyses are based on source data (laws and regulations, business plans, timetables, prices) as well as ad hoc extensive surveys, such as on-board counts on the HSR and intercity trains, retrospect surveys, and RP/SP interviews. In addition, an integrated modeling system has been developed to forecast the effects of competing titnetables/services/prices in terms of different HSR operators, competing modes (air/auto/railways), services (1st class/2nd class, etc.) and newly generated trips

An elastic demand schedule-based multimodal assignment model for the simulation of high speed rail (HSR) systems

HSR represents the future of medium-haul intercity transport. In fact, a number of HSR projects are being developed all over the world despite the financial and economic crisis. Such large investments require reliable demand forecasting models to develop solid business plans aiming at optimizing the fares structure and the timetables (operational level) and, on the other hand, at exploring opportunities for new businesses in the long period (strategic level). In this paper we present a model system developed to forecast the national passenger demand for different macroeconomic, transport supply, and HSR market scenarios. The core of the model is based on the simulation of the competition between transportation modes (i.e. air, auto, rail), railways services (intercity vs. High Speed Rail) and HSR operators using an explicit representation of the timetables of all competing modes\services (schedule-based assignment). This requires, in turn, a diachronic network representation of the transport supply for scheduled services and a nested logit model of mode, service, operator, and run choice. To authors’ knowledge this represents the first case of elastic demand, schedule-based assignment model at national scale to forecast HSR demand. The overall modeling framework has been calibrated based on extensive traffic counts and mixed RP-SP interviews gathered between 2009 and 2011, on the Italian multimodal transportation system. The results of the models estimation are presented, and, some applications to test HSR service options (i.e. fares and timetable) of a new operator entering the HSR market and competing with the national incumbent are discussed