Development of Urban Electric Bus Drivetrain

The development of the drivetrain for a new series of urban electric buses is presented in the paper. The traction and design properties of several drive variants are compared. The efficiency of the drive was tested using simulation calculations of the vehicle rides based on data from real bus lines in Prague. The results of the design work and simulation calculations are presented in the paper

Improved description of Bose-Einstein Correlation function

The L3 data on Bose-Einstein correlations of equally charged pion pairs produced in hadronic Z decays are analyzed in terms of various parametrizations. Preliminary results are presented here.Comment: Presented at the RHIC School 04, 4th Budapest Winter School on Heavy Ion Physics, Budapest, Hungary, December 1-3, 2004. To be published in Acta Physica Hungarica Heavy Ion Physic

Alternative Monetary Strategies before EMU Membership in Central Europe

As more and more transition coutries join the eurozone it is becoming reasonable to investigate what monetary policy might be most successful for countries prior to the introduction of the euro. One possible alternative is inflation targeting, which has found application in numerous economies in the last two decades, including the Visegrád Countries. In this paper I am introducing some important aspects and an empirical examination of the monetary policy of the Visegrád Countries. I am providing an overview of previous empirical findings and trying to make some comparisons of new EU and recommendations for pre-accession countries, such as Croatia

The factors affecting the international judgement of the Forint and Zloty in the light of the financial crisis of year 2008

The financial crisis of 2007-2009 has shaken both money and capital markets. Its consequences have not even left European markets untouched and divided spirits in the financial world. In some countries efforts by the monetary policy to protect the national currency throughout the crisis seemed to be ineffective. In the present paper we are investigating the effect of the most important macroeconomic and economic policy factors on the exchange rate of the forint and zloty in the last decade. For an analysis of exchange rates we are relying on some preceding research results based on equilibrium exchange rate theories

On the cost-complexity of multi-context systems

Multi-context systems provide a powerful framework for modelling information-aggregation systems featuring heterogeneous reasoning components. Their execution can, however, incur non-negligible cost. Here, we focus on cost-complexity of such systems. To that end, we introduce cost-aware multi-context systems, an extension of non-monotonic multi-context systems framework taking into account costs incurred by execution of semantic operators of the individual contexts. We formulate the notion of cost-complexity for consistency and reasoning problems in MCSs. Subsequently, we provide a series of results related to gradually more and more constrained classes of MCSs and finally introduce an incremental cost-reducing algorithm solving the reasoning problem for definite MCSs

Generalization of coloring linear transformation

The paper is focused on the technique of linear transformation between correlated and uncorrelated Gaussian random vectors, which is more or less commonly used in the reliability analysis of structures. These linear transformations are frequently needed to transform uncorrelated random vectors into correlated vectors with a prescribed covariance matrix (coloring transformation), and also to perform an inverse (whitening) transformation, i.e. to decorrelate a random vector with a non-identity covariance matrix. Two well-known linear transformation techniques, namely Cholesky decomposition and eigendecomposition (also known as principal component analysis, or the orthogonal transformation of a covariance matrix), are shown to be special cases of the generalized linear transformation presented in the paper. The proposed generalized linear transformation is able to rotate the transformation randomly, which may be desired in order to remove unwanted directional bias. The conclusions presented herein may be useful for structural reliability analysis with correlated random variables or random fields

Cost of Equity Estimation Techniques Used by Valuation Experts

Cost of equity is crucial information that enters business valuation. Yet, even after decades of academic research, consensus has not been reached regarding the appropriate cost of equity estimation. The aim of our paper is to investigate the cost of equity estimation in practice. In other words, we aim to provide data on the popularity of individual cost of equity models and evidence on what techniques are used for the estimation of parameters entering the models. For this purpose, we use a specifically developed program and obtain a unique dataset of cost of equity values, estimation methods and parameters used by valuation experts in the Czech Republic in the period between 1997 and 2009. Our findings suggest that the most popular model for cost of equity estimation is CAPM, which is followed by the heuristic build up model. In the case of CAPM, risk premiums for unsystematic risks are often applied. Such premiums depend to large extent on expert’s own experience and as such are rather qualitative in nature. Overall, in most points of the analysis, our results are consistent with previous, survey-based research on the US and the Western European data.business valuation, cost of equity, CAPM