2018 Census of California Water Transit Services

The U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics conducts a nationwide census of ferry boat operators for the U.S. Department of Transportation and the collected information is used for statistical purposes. The Caltrans Division of Local Assistance has been asked by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to gather data regarding ferry operations under the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21). MAP-21 includes a new formula program for ferry boats and ferry terminal facilities eligible under 23 USC 129(c) which authorizes federal participation in toll roads, bridges, tunnels, and ferries. FHWA has asked that Caltrans assure the ferry boat data is current for MAP-21.The Mineta Transportation Institute was initially contacted by Caltrans to conduct this census in 2012 and a report was delivered later that year. Now the census has been completed with updates through November 2018. The research team collected information from 25 water transportation operators throughout California and produced 42 accompanying maps that depict routes and terminals where the operators provide service. Tabular information for each operator catalogs their number of vessels, passenger counts, fares, seating capacity, route lengths and other data points. Note that a number of operators, despite repeated contact via phone and email, chose not to reply.This report organizes water transportation operations into three sections based on California geography: northern California, the Sacramento Delta region; and southern California. A fourth section documents four operators who did not fall within those three geographic regions.The report concludes with a listing of recreational voyage operators (e.g. cruises, fishing trips) that the authors felt did not constitute “water transportation” for the purposes of the detailed census yet may be of interest to those applying a broader definition of water transport

Accuracy assessment of remote sensing altimetry:an integrated approach of lake water level response

Abstract. Declination of lake water levels are extensively influenced by anthropogenic activities along with basin size, topography, and lake size. Lake Urmia was one of the largest hypersaline lakes in north-west Iran. Main outflow from the lake are evaporation and possible groundwater flux, whereas major sources of inflow are surrounding rivers and several streams. Overall, annual evaporation is higher than precipitation. The lake Water Level Fluctuation (WLF) is a function of inflow, rainfall, evaporation and groundwater flux. The aim of this study is to assess the accuracy of different Remote Sensing (RS) data which influences on WLF. Variation of Lake Urmia WLF in several sections were estimated based on different satellite missions e.g. Jason-2 and Jason-3 and compared with observed data and DAHITI dataset. The outcome showed that the algorithm of estimated WLF indicates better outline in some sections in Lake Urmia while some cases are not in good harmony with observed and DAHITI data. In order to find RS data accuracy, different driving factors on WLF were integrated by applying Water Balance simulation with combination of different scenarios for 2003–2007. The results showed the scenario which combines all observed data, has best pattern with observed Water Level of the lake to explain the response of the lake

Privacy-preserving smart nudging system: resistant to traffic analysis and data breach

A solution like Green Transportation Choices with IoT and Smart Nudging (SN) is aiming to resolve urban challenges (e.g., increased traffic, congestion, air pollution, and noise pollution) by influencing people towards environment-friendly decisions in their daily life. The essential aspect of this system is to construct personalized suggestion and positive reinforcement for people to achieve environmentally preferable outcomes. However, the process of tailoring a nudge for a specific person requires a significant amount of personal data (e.g., user's location data, health data, activity and more) analysis. People are willingly giving up their private data for the greater good of society and making SN system a target for adversaries to get people's data and misuse them. Yet, preserving user privacy is subtly discussed and often overlooked in the SN system. Meanwhile, the European union's General data protection regulation (GDPR) tightens European Unions's (EU) already stricter privacy policy. Thus, preserving user privacy is inevitable for a system like SN. Privacy-preserving smart nudging (PPSN) is a new middleware that gives privacy guarantee for both the users and the SN system and additionally offers GDPR compliance. In the PPSN system, users have the full autonomy of their data, and users data is well protected and inaccessible without the participation of the data owner. In addition to that, PPSN system gives protection against adversaries that control all the server but one, observe network traffics and control malicious users. PPSN system's primary insight is to encrypt as much as observable variables if not all and hide the remainder by adding noise. A prototype implementation of the PPSN system achieves a throughput of 105 messages per second with 24 seconds end-to-end latency for 125k users on a quadcore machine and scales linearly with the number of users

DC fault identification in multiterminal HVDC systems based on reactor voltage gradient

With the increasing number of renewable generations, the prospects of long-distance bulk power transmission impels the expansion of point-to-point High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) grid to an emerging Multi-terminal high-voltage Direct Current (MTDC) grid. The DC grid protection with faster selectivity enhances the operational continuity of the MTDC grid. Based on the reactor voltage gradient (RVG), this paper proposes a fast and reliable fault identification technique with precise discrimination of internal and external DC faults. Considering the voltage developed across the modular multilevel converter (MMC) reactor and DC terminal reactor, the RVG is formulated to characterise an internal and external DC fault. With a window of four RVG samples, the fault is detected and discriminated by the proposed main protection scheme amidst a period of five sampling intervals. Depending on the reactor current increment, a backup protection scheme is also proposed to enhance the protection reliability. The performance of the proposed scheme is validated in a four-terminal MTDC grid. The results under meaningful fault events show that the proposed scheme is capable to identify the DC fault within millisecond. Moreover, the evaluation of the protection sensitivity and robustness reveals that the proposed scheme is highly selective for a wide range of fault resistances and locations, higher sampling frequencies, and irrelevant transient events. Furthermore, the comparison results exhibit that the proposed RVG method improves the discrimination performance of the protection scheme and thereby, proves to be a better choice for future DC fault identification

Size dependent magnetic and electrical properties of Ba-doped nanocrystalline BiFeO3_3

Improvement in magnetic and electrical properties of multiferroic BiFeO$_3$ in conjunction with their dependence on particle size is crucial due to its potential applications in multifunctional miniaturized devices. In this investigation, we report a study on particle size dependent structural, magnetic and electrical properties of sol-gel derived Bi$_{0.9}$Ba$_{0.1}$FeO$_3$ nanoparticles of different sizes ranging from $\sim$ 12 to 49 nm. The substitution of Bi by Ba significantly suppresses oxygen vacancies, reduces leakage current density and Fe$^{2+}$ state. An improvement in both magnetic and electrical properties is observed for 10 % Ba-doped BiFeO$_3$ nanoparticles compared to its undoped counterpart. The saturation magnetization of Bi$_{0.9}$Ba$_{0.1}$FeO$_3$ nanoparticles increase with reducing particle size in contrast with a decreasing trend of ferroelectric polarization. Moreover, a first order metamagnetic transition is noticed for $\sim$ 49 nm Bi$_{0.9}$Ba$_{0.1}$FeO$_3$ nanoparticles which disappeared with decreasing particle size. The observed strong size dependent multiferroic properties are attributed to the complex interaction between vacancy induced crystallographic defects, multiple valence states of Fe, uncompensated surface spins, crystallographic distortion and suppression of spiral spin cycloid of BiFeO$_3$.Comment:

Rural consumers’ adoption of CRM in a developing country context

This paper illustrates how understanding consumer preferences through market research may enhance CRM adoption among the rural customers of a developing country like Bangladesh. It presents the case of Community Information Centre (CIC) established by Grameenphone, a company owned by Telenor, the Norwegian telecommunications company and Grameen Bank, the Nobel prize winning micro credit organisation in the rural settings of Bangladesh. The paper shows that CIC is an innovative way of building and maintaining customer relationships and technological interface with the financially constrained consumers in a poor developing economy like Bangladesh

Effect of NPK on growth, yield and seed quality of hybrid Chilli

An experiment was carried out at Germplasm Centre and Plant Biotechnology Lab, Department of Horticulture, PSTU to evaluate the growth, seed yield and quality of hybrid F1 chilli (cv. Sonic) crossing male line (LTSL-004-M) and female line (LTSL-004-F) along the viability of productive seeds influenced by NPK fertilizers during the period from November 2015 to October 2016. Ten different treatments of NPK fertilizers were used. Result showed that all the characteristics except primary branches and1000 seed weight were influenced significantly due to the application of NPK fertilizers. The tallest plant (69.88 cm), more leaves plant–1 (2491.33), highest number of secondary branches plant-1, tertiary branches plant-1 (5.00 and 88.00, respectively), number of flowers and hybrid fruits plant–1 (1533.00 and 12.33, respectively) and weight of seeds (4.03 g plant–1) along with required more time (54.67 days) for flowering were obtained from the application of 145 kg N ha–1, 175 kg P ha–1 and 96 kg K ha–1 (T4) which produced the highest final seed yield of chilli (4.03 kg ha–1). Application of T5 and T9 showed the highest number of primary branches (2.33). In seed viability characteristics T9 treated seeds showed the highest germination (100, 97.33 and 94.97%) at 1st, (1 MAH - Month After Harvest), 2nd (2 MAH) and 3rd (4 MAH) observations, respectively. The T3 treated seeds performed well in respect of Seed Vigour Index (SVI) at 1st and 2nd observations (8.00 and 7.48, respectively) but T9 treated seeds showed the highest SVI (6.32) at 3rd observation. Above indicating all characteristics were lowest under only recommended doses of NPK T1 as control treatment except days to first flowering. The observations suggested that production of hybrid chilli seeds could be enhanced by applying T4. While seeds of chilli treated by T9 in field level showed long time viable. Application of 145 kg N ha–1, 175 kg P ha–1 and 96 kg K ha–1 may be suggested for seed production of chilli and 110 kg N ha–1, + 175 kg P ha–1 + 115 kg K ha–1 for keeping the long time seed viability. Int. J. Agril. Res. Innov. & Tech. 9 (1): 35-41, June, 201