The Purchase by Railroads of Their Own Obligations

Recent studies from several authors show that it is possible to lower the fuel consumption for heavy trucks by utilizing information about the road topography ahead of the vehicle. The approach in these studies is receding horizon control where horizon length and residual cost are main topics. To approach these topics, fuel equivalents previously introduced based on physical intuition are given a mathematical interpretation in terms of Lagrange multipliers. Measures for the suboptimality, caused by the truncated horizon and the residual cost approximation, are defined and evaluated for different routes and parameters.Original Publication: Erik Hellström, Jan Åslund and Lars Nielsen, Horizon length and fuel equivalents for fuel-optimal look-ahead control, 2010, 6th IFAC Symposium Advances in Automatic Control. Copyright: INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF AUTOMATIC CONTROL IFAC.</p

EU som global politisk aktör - En utvärdering av Normative power Europe

What kind of international actor is the European Union and how shall we define it? These are questions that many have tried to answer often by addressing the apparent uniqueness of the EU itself. One of these theories is Normative power Europe. A theory whose main argument is that the EU is best perceived as a changer of norms. My aim with this thesis is to test this claim and to see if the Union should be regarded as a normative power. I do this by first examining the theory itself through the research of its creator Ian Manners. The second step is taken by introducing a series of case studies that are all, more or less influenced by Normative power Europe-thinking. The third step is a chapter concerned with the views of the theory's critics and other opposing research. My conclusion is that the theory of Normative power Europe cannot explain or predict all external actions made by the EU. Though it can be useful tool when analysing some of the external actions

The Hungry Stomach: Physiology, Disease, and Drug Development Opportunities

During hunger, a series of high-amplitude contractions of the stomach and small intestine (phase III), which form part of a cycle of quiescence and contractions (known as the migrating motor complex, MMC), play a “housekeeping” role prior to the next meal, and may contribute toward the development of hunger. Several gastrointestinal (GI) hormones are associated with phase III MMC activity, but currently the most prominent is motilin, thought to at least partly mediate phase III contractions of the gastric MMC. Additional GI endocrine and neuronal systems play even more powerful roles in the development of hunger. In particular, the ghrelin-precursor gene is proving to have a complex physiology, giving rise to three different products: ghrelin itself, which is formed from a post-translational modification of des-acyl-ghrelin, and obestatin. The receptors acted on by des-acyl-ghrelin and by obestatin are currently unknown but both these peptides seem able to exert actions which oppose that of ghrelin, either indirectly or directly. An increased understanding of the actions of these peptides is helping to unravel a number of different eating disorders and providing opportunities for the discovery of new drugs to regulate dysfunctional gastric behaviors and appetite. To date, ghrelin and motilin receptor agonists and antagonists have been described. The most advanced are compounds which activate the ghrelin and motilin receptors which are being progressed for disorders associated with gastric hypomotility

EU:s nya utrikes- och säkerhetspolitik- Orsaker till Europeiska konventets förändringsförslag i upprättandet av en konstitution för Europa

Uppsatsens resultat består i att vi har kommit fram till att det finns en rad faktorer som föranlett de ändringar som i konstitutionen föreslås rörande EU:s yttre förbindelser. Dessa faktorer har sin grund i de handlingar som konventets arbetsgrupp VII har lagt fram. Här framkommer problematik i det nuvarande systemet samtidigt som en rad förändringar föreslås. Problematiken berör i samtliga fall ineffektivitet och osamstämmighet i institutionerna, men också avsaknaden av gemenskap och solidaritet medlemsstaterna emellan. Arbetet utgår således från en tudelad frågeställning och metod, där uppsatsens första del är empiriskt beskrivande medan den andra delen har en mer analyserande och utredande karaktär. Frågeställningens svar står därmed att finna i en kombination av våra förklaringsfaktorer. Uppsatsen är tänkt att vara ett teoriutvecklande arbete, eftersom övrigt material i ämnet är mycket begränsat, särskilt gällande teori

Data rescue of historical wind observations in Sweden since the 1920s

Instrumental measurements of wind speed and direction from the 1920s to the 1940s from 13 stations in Sweden have been rescued and digitized, making 165 additional station years of wind data available through the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute&rsquo;s open data portal. These stations measured wind through different versions of cup-type anemometers and were mainly situated at lighthouses along the coasts and at airports. The work followed the protocol "Guidelines on Best Practices for Climate Data Rescue" of the World Meteorological Organization consisting of (i) designing a template for digitization; (ii) digitizing records in paper journals by a scanner; (iii) typing numbers of wind speed and direction data into the template and (iv) performing quality control of the raw observation data. Along with the digitization of the wind observations, meta data from the stations were collected and compiled as support to the following quality control and homogenization of the wind data. The meta data mainly consist of changes in observer and a small number of changes in instrument types and positions. The rescue of these early wind observations can help improve our understanding of long-term wind changes and multidecadal variability (e.g., the "stilling" vs. "reversal" phenomena), but also to evaluate and assess climate simulations of the past. Digitized data can be accessed through the SMHI open data portal: https://www.smhi.se/data, last access: 26 December 2022, and Zenodo repository: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5850264, last access: 26 December 2022, (Zhou et al., 2022).</p

Simulating river flow to the Baltic Sea from climate simulations over the past millennium

The aim of this study was to reconstruct river flow to the Baltic Sea using data from different periods during the past thousand years. A hydrological model coupled to simulations from climate models was used to estimate river flow. A "millennium" simulation of past climate from the ECHO-G coupled atmosphere-ocean global climate model provided climatological inputs. Results from this global model were downscaled with the RCA3 regional climate model over northern Europe. Temperature and precipitation from the downscaled simulation results were then used in the HBV hydrological model to simulate river flows to the Baltic Sea for the periods 1000-1199 and 1551-1929. These were compared with observations for the period 1921-2002. A general conclusion from this work is that although climate has varied during the past millennium, variability in annual river flow to the Baltic Sea does not appear more pronounced in recent years than during the previous millennium, or vice versa

Reducing Cyclic Dispersion in Autoignition Combustion by Controlling Fuel Injection Timing

Abstract-Model-based control design for reducing the cyclic variability (CV) in lean autoignition combustion is presented. The design is based on a recently proposed control-oriented model that captures the experimental observations of CV. The model is extended here to include the effect of the fuel injection timing, which is an effective way of influencing the combustion phasing. This model is only stable for certain amounts of residual gas. For high amounts, runaway behavior occurs where the combustion phasing occurs increasingly earlier. For low amounts, a cascade of period-doubling bifurcations occurs leading to chaotic behavior. This complex dynamics is further complicated with significant levels of noise, which creates a challenging control problem. With the aim at controllers feasible for on-board implementation, a proportional controller and a reduced-order state feedback controller are designed, with feedback from the combustion phasing. The controllers are evaluated by simulations and the results show that the CV can be significantly reduced, in an operating point of engine speed and load, for a wide range of residual gas fractions

Reducing Cyclic Dispersion in Autoignition Combustion by Controlling Fuel Injection Timing

Abstract-Model-based control design for reducing the cyclic variability (CV) in lean autoignition combustion is presented. The design is based on a recently proposed control-oriented model that captures the experimental observations of CV. The model is extended here to include the effect of the fuel injection timing, which is an effective way of influencing the combustion phasing. This model is only stable for certain amounts of residual gas. For high amounts, runaway behavior occurs where the combustion phasing occurs increasingly earlier. For low amounts, a cascade of period-doubling bifurcations occurs leading to chaotic behavior. This complex dynamics is further complicated with significant levels of noise, which creates a challenging control problem. With the aim at controllers feasible for on-board implementation, a proportional controller and a reduced-order state feedback controller are designed, with feedback from the combustion phasing. The controllers are evaluated by simulations and the results show that the CV can be significantly reduced, in an operating point of engine speed and load, for a wide range of residual gas fractions

A systematic review on the use of serious games in project management education

Project management education is well suited for active learning through serious games, and a lot of research has been published on the use of serious games for project management education. Earlier reviews have focused on the content and features of project management serious games. The objectives for using those serious games have been less reviewed. The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic review to better understand the objectives of using serious games in project management education, with the following research question: Why are project management serious games used in higher education? A systematic review was performed using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). A systematic search enabled us to identify 175 articles, of which forty-three met the eligibility criteria. An inductive content analysis of those articles showed that project management serious games are used mainly for pedagogical and practical reasons. From a pedagogical perspective, serious games are mainly used to develop specific skills that are difficult to acquire in classic ex cathedra lectures, such as practical competencies and soft skills. From a practical perspective, serious games are mainly used for proposing a risk-free trial environment. Based on our analysis, we propose a taxonomy of reasons for using PM games in higher education. Our study also reveals that few studies assess whether serious games meet all their objectives, and that more research is needed on how to implement them into a coherent pedagogical scenario