Route planning for electric buses: a case study in Oporto

This paper intends to analyze the performance of an electric bus for three different routes in the city of Oporto. The objective is to study the correlation between the type of route a bus travels and the amount of energy it spends in performing it. Besides energy, the potential of the recovering part of it through regenerative braking will also be discussed. It is expected that long and demanding routes, e.g. those encompassing meandering paths, will make the bus use more energy. To accomplish these objectives, a simulation platform was built upon both a nanoscopic representation of the electrical bus and its microscopic interaction with the road traffic network while performing different journeys through specific routes. Simulation results are compared and discussed, as well as are directions for future work identified.This work is financed by FEDER Funds, through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness Factors COMPETE, and by Portuguese Funds through FCT (Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia), under Project 13844. FCT is also acknowledged by its financial support through PhD scholarship grants SFRH/BD/167202/2009 and SFRH/BD/51256/2010, the latter within the MIT-Portugal Program in Engineering Design and Advanced Manufacturing Leaders for Technical Industries focus area

Tropical grass and legume pastures may alter lamb meat physical and chemical characteristics

The present study assessed the influence of the type of the tropical pastures on lamb body weight (BW) gain and meat quality. Fifty-four lambs were allocated to three grazing pastures: (1) AG — Aruana grass (Panicum maximum cv. IZ-5); (2) PP — pigeon pea legume (Cajanus cajan cv. Anão); and (3) CS — contiguous swards, half of the paddock with AG and half with PP. After 92 days of grazing, the lambs were slaughtered. Carcasses were evaluated and the longissimus muscle was collected to determine color, lipid profile, tocopherol concentrations, and lipid oxidation. Although the pastures present differences in the characteristics of nutritional quality, the animals did not show difference in BW gain. The results show that all forage presented similar concentration of alpha-tocopherol (137 ± 14.37 mg kg-1 of fresh matter), whereas total and condensed tannin contents were greater in PP, intermediate in CS, and the lowest in AG treatment (P = 0.0001). Meat a-tocopherol content was similar among treatments (P = 0.1392), with an average concentration close to the optimal level to reduce the meat oxidation. Meat from AG treatment had 45 and 25% lower n-6/n-3 ratio than meat from PP and CS treatments, respectively. The legume increases the unsaturated fatty acids and the grass can reduce the n6/n3 ratio. The level of condensed tannin concentration did show to have important effect on meat characteristics. Both tropical pastures studied can provide a high amount of alpha-tocopherol, generating a great potential to increase the concentration of this antioxidant in lamb’s meat. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V

Plantas daninhas na pós-colheita de milho nas várzeas do rio São Francisco, em Minas Gerais.

Realizou-se um estudo na região do Alto São Francisco, Minas Gerais, no final da safra agrícola 1997/1998, visando identificar as plantas daninhas que permanecem nas áreas após a colheita do milho e sua distribuição ao longo da área estudada, destacando-se as mais importantes. As observações foram realizadas em 12 municípios. Em cada local foi lançado, por cem vezes, um quadrado de 0,50 x 0,50 m, a espaços de 10 m. Dentro do quadrado foram contadas as espécies e registrado o número de indivíduos de cada uma delas. Foram encontradas 151 espécies em 35 famílias, sendo Asteraceae a mais bem representada, com 25 espécies. As espécies com maior Índice de Valor de mportância (IVI) foram: Ageratum conyzoides, Sida glaziovii, Conyza bonariensis, Gaya sp., Sida rhombifolia e Blainvillea biaristata. As plantas daninhas remanescentes nas áreas recém-colhidas são fonte de alimento para insetos polinizadores e inimigos naturais das pragas; adequadamente manejadas, elas podem favorecer a manutenção do equilíbrio nos agroecossistemas

Ocean Surface Current Airborne Radar (OSCAR): a new instrument to measure ocean surface dynamics at the sub-mesoscale

Oceans form Space V Symposium, 24-28 october 2022, Venice, Italy.-- 2 pages, 3 figuresThe ocean interacts with the atmosphere, land and ice on multiple spatial scales including fine submesoscales that are often observed in high resolution optical images. Little is known about their dynamics however. SeaSTAR is an innovative satellite mission concept that proposes to address this gap by mapping ocean current and wind vectors at 1 km resolution. In this paper, we present the OSCAR instrument - an airborne demonstrator of the SeaSTAR concept - and the first results from a scientific campaign over the Iroise Sea in May 2022. The capabilities of OSCAR are demonstrated against ground truth data with very promising first results. These results open the door to using OSCAR as a scientific tool to provide unique 2D synoptic views of ocean and atmosphere dynamics at km-scalesThis work was supported by ESA/ESTEC Contract Number 4000116410/16/NL/BJ for the OSCAR development and ESA/ESTEC contract number 400017623/22/NL/IA for the campaign over Iroise SeaPeer reviewe

Multi-objective energy storage power dispatching using plug-in vehicles in a smart-microgrid

This paper describes a multi-objective power dispatching problem that uses Plug-in Electric Vehicle (PEV) as storage units. We formulate the energy storage planning as a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) problem, respecting PEV requirements, minimizing three different objectives and analyzing three different criteria. Two novel cost-to-variability indicators, based on Sharpe Ratio, are introduced for analyzing the volatility of the energy storage schedules. By adding these additional criteria, energy storage planning is optimized seeking to minimize the following: total Microgrid (MG) costs; PEVs batteries usage; maximum peak load; difference between extreme scenarios and two Sharpe Ratio indices. Different scenarios are considered, which are generated with the use of probabilistic forecasting, since prediction involves inherent uncertainty. Energy storage planning scenarios are scheduled according to information provided by lower and upper bounds extracted from probabilistic forecasts. A MicroGrid (MG) scenario composed of two renewable energy resources, a wind energy turbine and photovoltaic cells, a residential MG user and different PEVs is analyzed. Candidate non-dominated solutions are searched from the pool of feasible solutions obtained during different Branch and Bound optimizations. Pareto fronts are discussed and analyzed for different energy storage scenarios. Perhaps the most important conclusion from this study is that schedules that minimize the total system cost may increase maximum peak load and its volatility over different possible scenarios, therefore may be less robust