Methodological aspects of surveying the volume, structure, activities and perceptions of city centre visitors

Counting pedestrians on a street and visitors entering a store is a method used to measure the attractiveness of these places. Their volumes are governed by daily, weekly, monthly and yearly cycles and are subject to random influences. This must be taken into account especially where comparison counts reveal changes. When single streets or stores are counted, it must be ascertained whether this figure is representative of the whole city centre and its retailing. Pedestrian volumes can be used for adjusting interview samples to the distribution in time and space of the city centre visitors. Counts of the qualitative characteristics of the pedestrian with respect to composition of groups reveal that surveys among pedestrians are biased in relation to the size of the group. Special attention in surveys should be given to the linking of activities. Whereas much emphasis is given to the accessibility of the city centre from outside, the ‘inner accessibility’ of the city centre is just as important. Long distances are often walked and many destinations visited. This is best recorded by conducting interviews at public transport stops and car parks. The attractiveness of the city centre depends not only on its physical structures but very much on the subjective perception of them; therefore judgements on accessibility, goods and services offered and the urban ambiance should be recorded. Retailer's attitudes concerning the qualities of the city centre should also be compiled for comparison. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Depth of closure: New calculation method based on sediment data

Obtaining depth of closure (DoC) in an accurate manner is a fundamental issue for coastal engineering, since good results for coastal structures and beach nourishment depend mainly on DoC. Currently, there are two methods for obtaining the DoC, mathematical formulations and profile surveys. However, these methods can incur important errors if one does not take into account the characteristics and morphology of the area, or if one does not have a sufficiently long time series. In this work the DoC is obtained from the break in the trend of the sediment with the depth, that is, in general with the increase of the depth a decrease in the size of the sediment takes place. However, at one point this tendency changes and the size increases, and then decreases again. When comparing the point where the minimum sediment size occurs before the increase, it is observed that the error incurred is small compared to other methods. If the Standard Deviation of Depth Change (SDDC) method is considered as the most accurate method, the error incurred by the proposed method is less than 7%. In addition, it can be seen that the dispersion of the sediment method always occurs outside the zone of bar movement. Whereas in the methods of profiles survey (using 2 cm precision profiles), sometimes the DoC is obtained within the active zone of bar movement. In addition, where the relative minimum of the median sediment size is found, and the sizes of 0.063 and 0.125 mm predominate in the composition of the sample. Therefore, this new method allows the precise location of the DoC to be obtained in a fast and simple way. Furthermore, this method has the advantage that it is not affected by the modifications that may be experienced by both the study area and the cross-shore beach profile.     

Rovibrational excitation of HD in collisions with atomic and molecular hydrogen

We have computed cross-sections and rate coefficients for rovibrational transitions in HD, induced by collisions with atomic and molecular hydrogen. We employed fully quantum-mechanical methods and the potential of Boothroyd et al. for H–HD, and that of Schwenke for H₂–HD. The rate coefficients for vibrational relaxation v =1→0 of HD are compared with the corresponding values for H₂. The influence of vibrationally excited channels on the rate coefficients for rotational transitions within the v =0 vibrational ground state of HD is shown to be small at T =500 K, where T is the kinetic temperature. The rate coefficients, for 100 T 2000 K, are available from http://ccp7.dur.ac.uk/.     

使用价值分析优化方法在功能-技术矩阵求解中的应用

功能-技术矩阵,经众多工作者的努力研究,已渐趋成熟与实用。但如何利用功能-技术矩阵构造在广义现代设计领域中适用的科学模式,解决多学科设计方案的组成与评价问题,还存在薄弱环节。本文利用\     

The Large-Scale, Decelerating X-ray Jets from the Microquasar Xte J1550−564: Evidence for External Shocks Caused by the Jet-Ism Interaction?

Large-scale, decelerating, relativistic X-ray jets from microquasar XTE J1550−564 has been recently discovered with Chandra by Corbel et al. (2002). We find that the dynamical evolution of the approaching jet at the late time is consistent with the well-known Sedov evolutionary phase R∝ t ^2/5. A trans-relativistic external shock dynamic model by analogy with the evolution of gamma-ray burst remnants, is shown to be able to fit the proper-motion data of the approaching jet reasonably well. The inferred interstellar medium density around the source is well below the canonical value n _ISM∼1 cm⁻³. The rapidly fading X-ray emission can be interpreted as synchrotron radiation from the non-thermal electrons in the adiabatically expanding ejecta. These electrons were accelerated by the reverse shock (moving back into the ejecta) which becomes important when the inertia of the swept external matter leads to an appreciable slowing down of the original ejecta.