Road Safety Performance Indicators: Theory. Deliverable D3.6 of the EU FP6 project SafetyNet.

This document provides details about the theory behind the development of Safety Performance Indicators (SPIs) in seven major areas which are central to the fields of activity in road safety in Europe. The fields of activity were selected as a result of reviews of national road safety plans in many of the EU countries and around the world and are considered the central themes of activity in road safety, necessary to bring about a significant improvement in road safety in the EU countries. Within each field SPIs were developed which are directly related to that field of activity, can be quantitatively measured, can provide the basis for the assessment of the level of road safety in each country and can serve as an indicator to describe the level of activity in that field and country and can provide a yardstick for comparison. Comparisons can be before and after certain actions are taken or can be comparisons between countries. As stated above, this document deals with the theory behind the development of each of the seven SPIs. It provides the rationale behind their development, the proofs for their relevance in the specific fields and the existing limitations that led to the adoption of the specific SPIs. The document provides also some recommendations for the possible improvements required to obtain better SPIs. Two companion documents are also being prepared. One is a manual which provides details on the procedures necessary to collects the required data for the development of each SPI in each country. The second document provides results on the data collected so far for each of the 25 EU countries and the SPIs developed so far, based on the data submitted by each of the countries. It can be seen that a lot of work still has to be done, both in collecting the necessary data and in improving the SPIs, once better and more detailed data becomes available

Flexibel verschiebbare Kopplungseinrichtung fuer die akustisch angeregte Rasterkraftmikroskopie mit akustischer Anregung der Probe

WO 2010085948 A1 UPAB: 20100825 NOVELTY - The device has a fluid reservoir (3) with an interior space (I) filled with fluid (2) i.e. rain water, where a lower side (U) of a sample body is lat

Visibility of buried structures in atomic force acoustic microscopy

Advanced Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM) modes such as Atomic Force Acoustic Microscopy (AFAM) and Ultrasonic Force Microscopy (UFM) combine Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) with an excitation of the sample or cantilever by ultrasound. These techniques become increasingly powerful tools for the determination of material properties on nanoscale. Non-destructive evaluation of subsurface and buried structures is getting more and more important in semiconductor industries and electronics system integration technology. Existing methods that allow subsurface measurements with high local resolution are mostly based on destructive concepts as surface ablation by Focused Ion Beam (FIB) devices. It is widely discussed in literature that AFAM and UFM techniques should have the capability to detect subsurface features. But direct proofs of this capability are hard to find. The difficulty comes from the point that in UFM and AFAM images besides elastic contrast also topological contrast is mixed in. So, for a direct proof samples are needed which (a) show subsurface contrast and (b) having definitely no surface topology correlated with the subsurface feature in question. These samples are not so easy to obtain. An appropriate sample fabrication technology was developed based on the focused ion beam technique. Using the machined samples the buried structure visibility for the AFAM technique could be proved uniquely. The results are compared with conclusions from modeling

Determination of deformation fields by atomic force acoustic microscopy

Advanced Scanning Probe Microscopy techniques combine Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) with ultrasound. Atomic Force Acoustic Microscopy (AFAM) and Ultrasonic Force Microscopy (UFM) become increasingly powerful tools for the determination of material properties on nanoscale. AFAM is mainly applied to the analysis of materials with elastic properties locally varying on micro- and nanoscale. Deformation fields and buried structures can be visualized. In AFAM, flexural and torsional cantilever vibrations are excited by out-of-plane and in-plane sample surface vibrations. The ultrasound is transmitted from the sample into the cantilever while forces act between sensor tip and sample. The sample surface is scanned by the sensor, and an ultrasonic image is acquired simultaneously to the topography image. The contrast comprehended in the ultrasonic image depends on surface topography and on the local elastic and adhesive properties of the sample. Voids, inclusions, or cracks, which build up regions of different elastic constants in the interior of the material, are sensed by the local elastic response of the tip. As a consequence, information on hidden structures can be derived from the acoustic images. Usually, this subsurface information is overlaid by additional topographic information, also contained in the ultrasonic image. Here, an AFAM set up is combined with tensile and bending modules. This approach allows generation of static deformation fields on surfaces and in-situ imaging and analysis of these fields in the AFM or AFAM. A software module for micro deformation analysis by means of correlation based algorithms (MicroDAC) is used to determine the local surface deformation quantitatively

Method and device for monitoring distortion in an optical network

A method and a device for monitoring of distortion in an optical network are provided, wherein at least one reference signal and at least one data signal are conveyed via an optical link and wherein a distortion of the at least one data signal is determined based on the at least one reference signal. Also, a corresponding transceiver and a communication system comprising any such device are suggested

NOLM-based RZ-DPSK signal regeneration

We present a nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM)-based 2R-regenerator setup, which signals modulated in phase-sensitive modulation formats. In a conventional NOLM, fluctuations of the signal amplitude are converted into phase fluctuations. Therefore, it is not suitable for regeneration of signals, modulated in formats such as differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) or duobinary. In this letter, we present a modified NOLM setup for 2R-regeneration taking return-to-zero DPSK as an example